Identity, the individual, and the mind: the Hogan twins, joined at the brain

The New Neo Posted on by

The other night I happened across a documentary on TLC entitled “Inseparable: Joined.”

Here’s an article about the people the documentary explored: the conjoined Hogan twins of Canada, who are joined at the brain:

Craniopagus twins, joined at the head, are a rarity — one in 2.5 million. The vast majority do not survive 24 hours.

The Hogan twins are not just joined at the head. They also share a connection of the thalamus called a thalamus bridge. So each twin has a separate brain and her own thalamus, but each thalamus communicates with the other one and probably with more than the thalamus.

The documentary shows this extraordinary and fascinating situation. The twins are doing surprisingly well, but the fact that they are “doing” anything at all, including being alive, is surprising. They have different personalities, and although they have some learning disabilities – perhaps due to some of their other problems, which include epilepsy (and medication for it), diabetes, and celiac disease – if you watch them you can see they are quite intelligent, although slow for their age.

The twins cannot be surgically separated; it is considered too life-threatening. They were 10 years old at the time of the documentary and are 12 years old now. They also seem to have a good sense of humor.

But perhaps the most extraordinary element of their incredibly extraordinary situation is the way in which their brains communicate. It is being studied and is not that well understood, but for example one can be blindfolded and can tell what the other is seeing. In other words, they share some sensory input. But to make it even more complex, one of the twins can see from both eyes of the other, and the other twin can only see from one eye of her twin.

In a somewhat similar manner, one twin can voluntarily move three legs and one arm, and the other twin can voluntarily move three arms and one leg. But they are able to override this and just move the arms and legs on their side of the body, so that their movements can be coordinated. So it is partly voluntary, something they can access or turn off at will.

The thalamus acts like a switchboard relaying sensory and motor signals and regulating consciousness…

The twins say they know one another’s thoughts without having to speak. “Talking in our heads” is how they describe it.

In the TLC documentary I saw, after tobogganing down a hill one twin says, “I was so scared!” and the other proudly announces, “I wasn’t scared!” followed by, “I need to hold onto my sister because she’s scared!” and raucous laughter. They seem to mean this to be some sort of joke. And it’s actually pretty witty because of course they have no choice about “holding onto each other,” and they also share emotions in the sense of perceiving each other’s emotions. Sometimes there is even carryover in which one’s emotions affect the emotions of the other more directly and seem to influence the emotions of the other.

The Hogan twins’ situation conjures up questions involving identity, individuality, and the brain. Clearly, from the example of identical twins in general, we know that DNA does not determine identity because, although all identical twins share DNA, each twin is well aware of having a separate identity from the other twin. The Hogan twins take that one (or two, or three or four or more) steps further. They have separate identities and personalities, but their shared brain connection seems to give them not only a close bond (such as many identical twins have) but the ability to access sensory, cognitive, emotional, and motor elements of each others’ bodies.

[NOTE: I haven’t been able to find a link to the documentary I saw, but here’s a different one.]

Sean Davis on Ukraine envoy Volker’s testimony

The New Neo Posted on by

First Volker’s pending appearance was hyped to the skies by the Democrats: this was going to implicate Trump.

Then Volker was interviewed in closed session, and the results were misrepresented by the MSM and the Democrats.

Now the testimony is out, although the lie probably got halfway around the world first:

Congressional testimony from the former top American envoy to Ukraine directly contradicts the impeachment narrative offered by congressional Democrats and their media allies. Ambassador Kurt Volker, who served for two years as the top U.S. diplomatic envoy to Ukraine, testified on Thursday that he was never aware of and never took part in any effort to push the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden or his son Hunter. He also stressed that the interactions between Giuliani and Ukrainian officials were facilitated not to find dirt on Biden, but to assuage concerns that the incoming Ukrainian government would not be able to get a handle on corruption within the country.

Volker’s full remarks, which were obtained by The Federalist, can be read here.

Sean Davis has done excellent and thorough work on Whistlegate.

The left thinks it can completely control the narrative on Whistlegate (and everything else), because it controls so many of the organs of the press, and it has successfully demonized the press on the right to a certain extent. But the left can’t control the narrative as completely as it used to, and many people don’t trust the MSM as well.

Remember the Tea Party, and what happened to it?

The New Neo Posted on by

I sure do.

And after all the shouting died, the propaganda against the Tea Party remains because it worked.

And events like that are, as they say, how you get Trump.

Which is the point made here:

I still hear the Tea Party invoked by liberal friends as an example of extremism, despite how calm and collected they were. So few of them even knew that it started in Chicago, on the trading floor, with people upset that they were forced to subsidize failure. It was hopeful and enthusiastic, open to anyone – and the Left treated it like the KKK merged with radical anarchists. The Republicans took their support and generally did nothing.

So, people tried something different. Romney was the ultimate nice-guy candidate. Unimpeachable ethics, a proven record of success, and moderate credentials. The Left chewed him up and spat him out. If Abe Lincoln or George Washington rose from the grave and ran for president, they would get the same treatment.

Thus, after you send in friendly folks with SUV and pickups, then a philanthropist in a limo, might as well send in a tank

That is correct as far as it goes. But I want to add two more weapons that were utilized against the Tea Party. The first was connected with the aforementioned KKK treatment; I think it is important to add that one of the main drivers of that was a specific accusation concocted and/or furthered by two Democratic members of Congress:

“A bright line was crossed on the 20th,” says Christina Botteri, a spokeswoman for the Tea Party Federation. “The left constantly attacks conservatives as racist, as dumb, as evil, but what happened on the 20th is a sitting congressman, with the full voice and credibility of the House of Representatives, accused a group of citizens with whom he philosophically disagrees of assault and then refused to help find the persons responsible. They need to help us find the people responsible or apologize for making it up.”

Conservative Web publisher Andrew Breitbart has accused the congressmen of lying about the incident in an effort to tar the tea party movement. He has gone so far as to offer a $100,000 donation to the United Negro College Fund for proof. Though it appears from footage that at least some of the congressmen’s entourage were filming the walk, no one has claimed the bounty.

“[This] is a slander with real-world repercussions,” Mr. Breitbart asserts on BigJournalism.com. Some in the mainstream press have conceded tea partyers may have a point.

No evidence ever emerged despite lots of looking and much video footage.

The second thing that happened to the Tea Party, of course, was discrimination by the IRS in order to reduce their influence during the 2012 election. That, and the fact that no one was ever prosecuted for such actions, was another reason for ire on the right.

Romney was indeed treated abominably by the Democrats and the media despite his mild-mannered and squeaky-clean profile. He was defeated, as we know, and I personally have many acquaintances who bought every single thing that was said about him. Particularly effective was the idea that he somehow was anti-woman, which they clearly believed was completely true.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It would be a long long post if I was to list all similar events that came together to create the groundswell of popular movement for someone like Trump. The Democrats richly earned him, as did the press.

Trump is not allowed to be a president

The New Neo Posted on by

I think it boils down to two issues for the left regarding Trump. The first is that he’s president at all, and does what presidents do with all the attendant powers of a president. The second is that he is not afraid to use those powers in ways that stand to harm the Democrats and their interests.

They find these two things unconscionable. So they redefine whatever Trump does that they don’t like and/or that may harm them politically as unacceptable, unprecedented, offensive, and even at times criminal.

And always, always impeachable.

But of course all presidents continue to do things that are in their political interests. Most of those things have other motivations, as well – most often, that the president believes that such actions will also benefit the country or even the world. It’s really not rocket science. Among those things can be something like “fighting corruption,” including corruption that occurs at the hands of people opposed to that president. To do otherwise – to give corrupt and/or illegal actions a pass because they are done by political opponents – would itself be a terrible thing.

For example, we have this:

President Trump’s critics are now complaining that he asked the Australian prime minister to cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigation into the origins of the Mueller probe and that Attorney General William Barr has traveled overseas to ask foreign intelligence officials to cooperate with that investigation. The New York Times called it another example of “the president using high-level diplomacy to advance his personal political interests.”…

As George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley explains, “It is not uncommon for an attorney general, or even a president, to ask foreign leaders to assist with ongoing investigations. Such calls can shortcut bureaucratic red tape, particularly if the evidence is held, as in this case, by national security or justice officials.”

That sort of cooperation with the DOJ investigation of the machinations that led up to the Mueller report is what Trump asked for in the Zelensky phone call, right after he said “I would like you to do us a favor.” In addition, the US has a treaty with Ukraine concerning mutual assistance with prosecutions.

On the other hand, in that article from the Post that I quoted from at the beginning, author Marc Thiessen calls the Biden probe “opposition research.” I beg to differ. Not all research that involves someone who happens to be a political opponent is primarily “opposition research,” although it is tangentially that. The Biden case has an especially unusual set of circumstances: the fact situation regarding Hunter Biden had already started to be prosecuted by Ukraine long before Trump was president, and had then been dropped by a new prosecutor who replaced the prosecutor that Biden strong-armed Ukraine to fire (with a direct quid pro quo threat from Biden to withhold foreign aid if that prosecutor was not fired). Biden says it was done for other reasons than to stop his son’s investigation, but Biden’s on-record threat has the appearance of tremendous impropriety and corruption. It is perfectly proper to ask for help in investigating that entire fact situation to see what the reality was with Hunter Biden and to also see whether Joe Biden as VP purposely and knowingly stopped a corruption investigation of his own son, using a direct quid pro quo which his position as VP gave him the power to employ, and whether that was the primary reason for the threat.

In the transcript of the Trump/Zelensky phone call there is one single sentence about the Bidens. This is it:

The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.

Absolutely nothing wrong with that as far as I can see. It is irrelevant that Biden is running for the Democratic nomination. Are all the Democratic candidates immune from any investigation into what they actually may have done, including if it involves that person’s interference in a foreign country’s investigation of their own child, when that person held high public office in the US and threatened to withhold aid to that country if the prosecutor wasn’t fired? And if that action of the candidate is on the record, admitted to (and bragged about) by the candidate him/herself? That would be a ludicrous rule, and certainly one that has never been uttered before or even conceptualized.

Trump did not manufacture evidence or get anyone in any foreign country to manufacture evidence against Biden or Biden’s son. And yet that is exactly what the Democrats and Hillary’s campaign apparently did regarding Trump, with willing cooperation and help from government agencies such as the FBI. No one has ever been prosecuted for it. And the very same people who say Trump can’t say what he said to Zelensky then go and defend what Hillary and the Democrat partisans in government agencies did.

On the current state of Whistlegate

The New Neo Posted on by

Mark Levin is not a favorite of mine. Not that I tend to listen to talk radio or to cable news very often, but his voice in particular grates. I always chuckle when I see him referred to (I think it’s at Ace’s) as “Ol’ Yeller,” because it’s such a perfect description of his one-note style of angry yelling.

But sometimes yelling seems appropriate. And Levin’s very smart and knows his legal stuff. I happened to catch this appearance of Levin’s last night, and I thought I’d post it:

Any corrupt official who wants to evade investigation need only run for president on the Democratic side and he’s immune, apparently. Who knew?

Here’s a quieter statement from David Marcus at The Federalist [emphasis mine]:

Asked about what he wants Ukrainian President Volomydyr Zelensky to do about Hunter Biden’s business dealings there Trump said, “I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens.” He also suggested that China should open a similar investigation. But what Trump was mostly saying is that he is the president and there is nothing wrong with saying such things to foreign leaders.

The issue of whether the president may urge foreign leaders to conduct investigations of American citizens running for office has now become the crux of the impeachment inquiry. Long gone now are allegations of any quid pro quo with Zelensky. That ship sailed when the transcript of Trump’s call with the Ukrainian leader offered no evidence that the president was offering military aid as a carrot, which was the initial allegation…

Trump clearly feels that something untoward and perhaps illegal occurred regarding Hunter Biden in Ukraine and China…So the question is, is it illegal for Trump to ask foreign leaders to look into it?

The answer to this question seems to almost certainly be no. In fact, the closest thing the Democrats can pin to the president is a vague campaign finance violation. Is it tacky? Does it violate norms? Yes, probably, but it is just as plausible that Trump wanted answers about family members in the Obama administration getting sweet deals from foreign governments as it is that he was trying to damage a potential political rival.

And what if both things are true? What if Trump is genuinely concerned about corruption in our foreign affairs, and the fact that Joe Biden might be mixed up in it is a just a bonus? If there are cases, which there certainly are, when it is appropriate and legal for a president to urge foreign leaders to investigate potential wrongdoing by Americans, then the Democrats have to prove why in this case is [sic] wasn’t.

Their answer is that Joe Biden is running for president. Their entire argument for impeachment now rests on the idea that Biden’s candidacy makes him immune to such calls for scrutiny. But they will not and can not point to an actual law that Trump violated in the conversation. Rather, they make vague arguments about courting foreign interference in an election and potential campaign finance violations.

Oh, and then there’s this:

Hiding behind the “whistleblower” fiction. How long can that go on, I wonder? The MSM and the Democrats would like it to go on forever, or at least long enough to impeach Trump.

More from Andrew C. McCarthy at The Hill. McCarthy’s no yeller, but he has a lot to say:

What is portrayed as an “impeachment inquiry” is actually just a made-for-cable-TV political soap opera. The House of Representatives is not conducting a formal impeachment inquiry. To the contrary, congressional Democrats are conducting the 2020 political campaign…

When the Framers debated whether to include an impeachment clause in the Constitution, they had serious concerns. They were designing a separation-of-powers system that endowed the coordinate branches with checks and balances to police each other. They understood that impeachment authority was necessary, but feared it would give the legislature too much power over the executive.

They also worried that impeachment could be politicized. If it were too easy to do procedurally, or it could be resorted to for trifling acts of maladministration, factions opposed to the president would be tempted to try to overturn elections and grind the government to a halt.

To address these concerns, the Framers adopted a burdensome standard — high crimes and misdemeanors (in addition to treason and bribery) — that would restrict impeachable offenses to truly egregious abuses of power. Then they erected an even higher bar: a two-thirds supermajority requirement for conviction in the Senate.

All this was to ensure that the electoral will of the people must never be overturned in the absence of misconduct so severe that it results in a broad consensus that the nation’s well-being requires removing the president from power.

Although the House has the raw power to file articles of impeachment based on frivolous allegations and minor abuses, the Senate supermajority requirement for removal is designed to have a sobering effect on the lower chamber. Impeachment should not be sought out of partisanship. There must be misconduct that would convince objective Americans, regardless of their politics, that the president must be ousted — not merely criticized or censured, but stripped of authority…

Every presidential impeachment inquiry, from Andrew Johnson through Bill Clinton, has been the subject of bipartisan consultation and debate. The House has recognized that its legitimacy, and the legitimacy of its most solemn actions, must be based on the consideration of the whole body, not the diktat of a few partisan bosses.

Not this one. This one is a misadventure in exactly the bare-knuckles partisanship the Framers feared. To be sure, no one has the power to prevent willful House leadership from misbehaving this way. But we’re not required to pretend the charade is real.

[NOTE: I wrote most of this post late last night. I realize, on looking at the word “current” in the title, that it’s nearly impossible to actually stay current with this story, since facts are emerging at such a rapid pace.]

Adam Schiff’s m.o.

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a good example [emphasis mine]:

…Adam Schiff and company released several pages of cherry-picked text conversations late last night which revolved around Ukraine and whether Trump had offered a quid pro quo in exchange for an investigation into Biden…

The only supposedly “damning” parts of the text messages involved a man named Bill Taylor insinuating there was a quid pro quo, after which the U.S. Ambassador to the EU corrected his notion. But the line from the media and blue checkmark Twitter was that Taylor was saying what he said because he had actual information of an offered quid pro quo.

Now, it appears that’s not true. Instead, Taylor had read a Politico article well after everything had transpired. Who happened to have contributed to that article? If you guessed Fusion GPS mouthpiece Natasha Bertrand, congrats (if you guessed Ken Dilanian, you were close at least)…

Adam Schiff is as slimy as they come. He put these text messages out there late last night, knowing no one would be available to rebut them right away, all the while knowing Volker had already disproven the narrative he wanted to push. And like good lackeys, the media ran with it and are still running with it.

That’s the way it keeps going. The lie is put out there, often using the person’s own words but leaving out the exculpatory part. The implication is always of Trump’s guilt. The lies pile up, over and over and over. The liar (Schiff in this case, as is often the case) counts on the cooperation of the MSM. He also counts on the idea that most people only read the initial story and never read any corrections if in fact any are ever issued (often they are not). Schiff also knows that alternate sources of information are usually not read by Democrats or even by a great many independents.

So he issues those lies, both Big and Small, to do their work. Schiff is not stupid. His lies are not told in error. They are a tactic in a long-term strategy, and he believes that strategy will be successful in creating enough smoke to convince a great many people that there’s a big fire.

Rashida Tlaib’s racist racial confusion

The New Neo Posted on by

Rashida Tlaib should be an embarrassment to the Democratic Party, but she seems to be off-limits to their criticism.

Here’s what she said:

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib told Detroit police Chief James Craig he should employ only black people on the department’s facial recognition team because “non-African Americans think African-Americans all look the same.”

The Detroit Democrat made the statement during a tour of the Real Time Crime center, where monitors display live footage from video cameras on traffic lights and in and around businesses.

So, what is she saying here?

First of all, she’s making a generalization about the perceptions of people who aren’t black.

Second of all – although few people seem to take note of this fact, because Tlaib seems to have earned some sort of racial immunity – I can’t help but notice that Tlaib herself is white.

Yes folks, people of Palestinian ethnicity such as Tlaib are white, as white as I am and not all that different actually (see photos of me as a child and compare them to a bunch of Palestinian children and yes, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference). Tlaib is white, I repeat. So one must ask: is Tlaib describing herself and her own perceptions? Is she the person unable to make such discriminations between one black person and another?

And let me add that, even if you don’t think Tlaib is white – which she is – she is definitely “non-African American,” which is the group she was generalizing about when she indicated that “non-African Americans” think African Americans all look the same.

Thirdly, if Tlaib is saying that only black people should be employed in Detroit’s criminal facial recognition system, is she also then implying that only black people commit crimes in Detroit? But surely there are some white criminals. Should there be a special white people squad for facial recognition composed of whites, for the white criminals?

NOTE: Tlaib also said, during the same exchange: “I’ve seen it even on the House floor: People calling Elijah Cummings ‘John Lewis,’ and John Lewis ‘Elijah Cummings,’ and they’re totally different people.”

Indeed, they are. And yet they are sometimes confused with each other because, you know what? They actually do look alike. Not enough to be identical twins, but enough to be confused with each other, and not because of any racism or any inherent difficulty in telling black people apart.

Here’s a lighthearted article from TNR in 2013 pairing a number of then-members of Congress who look alike. Four out of the five pairs are white. One of the pairs is Lewis and Cummings. Here’s the Lewis/Cummings photo (or is it the Cummings/Lewis photo?) that the article uses to illustrate the phenomenon:

[ADDENDUM: Another statement from Tlaib:

During a town hall meeting with constituents in Michigan this week, Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib agreed that U.S. Marshals should “hunt down” White House officials and remove them from office if they “refuse to leave power.” This includes President Trump…

…”They’re trying to figure out, no joke, is it the DC police that goes and gets them?” Tlaib said. “Where do we hold them? Like, I’m not in those kinds of conversations but I’m asking, what happens?”

“I’m telling you, they’re trying to be like, ‘Well where are we going put them? Where are we going to hold…'” she continued, suggesting they can be held in Detroit. “What happens when they don’t comply? The fact of the matter is we held Barr and Secretary Ross from Commerce, the Secretary of Commerce, in contempt. Well, what happens if they continue to not comply?”]

Roger L. Simon: The Joseph Mifsud story

The New Neo Posted on by

Roger Simon writes:

So Barr, in the company of John Durham, his lead investigator on these matters, was in Rome talking with several people high up in Italian intelligence. They are supposed to have played for him a tape recording Mifsud left before he disappeared. If it turns out the professor was a U.S. agent or one allied to the U.S., planted to suck in the naive Papadopoulos, to make him run back to the mothership and blabber about something that wasn’t true in order to hang Trump, it is one of the greatest and most evil stories of our times. If it can be proven that what we have experienced for the entire Trump era is a put-up job linked to the previous administration, to the Brennans and Clappers of the world, Professor Mifsud is the nerdy Helen of Troy who launched the thousand ships of the Mueller investigation, resulting in impeachment currently being shrieked on every corner and, frankly, mass U.S. hysteria and hatred across our land. It is… he is… to use mystery language again, the MacGuffin of all time — or at least of American history. Whether you call it treason or sedition, it is unlike anything that has happened in our country before. It is more like the workings of the NKVD.

I wonder whether Barr and/or Durham will ever be able to get to the bottom of it.

Or whether, if they do, the MSM will deign to cover it if the facts end up discrediting Obama or the Democrats or left in general.

Hong Kong update: emergency powers

The New Neo Posted on by

From Claudia Rossett:

But what the initial extradition-law threat highlighted for Hong Kong’s people was that unless they are able to elect their own leaders, they will be directly at the mercy of a Beijing-appointed chief executive, who will — a la Lam — serve Beijing’s imperatives of grinding away Hong Kong’s freedoms. As it is, Hong Kongers did not choose Carrie Lam as a leader, nor do they have any institutional way to get rid of her. Beijing calls the shots.

So, per Lam’s latest move in the name of “calm,” protesters here can now face criminal penalties of up to than $3,000 and a year’s imprisonment simply for wearing the masks they have used to defend themselves against tear gas and the possibility of arrest.

And, having invoked emergency powers, Lam is now in a position to do almost anything. As the New York Times sums it up: “Under the emergency powers, Mrs. Lam has a wide discretion to create new criminal laws and amend existing laws — all without going through the legislative process.” Newspapers can be censored or shuttered, web sites closed down, property seized, searches carried out galore, and so forth.

Such powers are enormously dangerous in the hands of a chief executive who clearly jumps to the tune of Beijing, and has shown no interest whatsoever in defending the rights and freedoms promised to Hong Kong.

An executive the people have not chosen assumes emergency powers against the people who are protesting her rule and China’s domination. Emergency powers are the way of dictators nearly everywhere for clamping down in a manner not allowed by law under ordinary circumstances.

I believe that China will do whatever it thinks it has to do to keep control of the people of Hong Kong, and that it has no interest in preserving the rights they previously enjoyed. I cannot understand why it was ever thought it likely that China would act any differently.

Covering Whistlegate

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: For a while I called the current Ukraine/impeachment brouhaha “Whistleblowergate.” But that seemed way too unwieldy. Recently somewhere (I don’t recall where) I saw it referred to as “Whistlegate,” and that seems way better to me.]

One of the hallmarks of the major actions by what has become known as the Deep State to take down Trump has been their relative complexity. That’s partly because they were run in a clandestine manner, with many players and even international locations involved. In short, it would take a book – or several – to do each one justice. And I think such complexity is considered a perk by those who designed them, because it makes it easier for their allies in the press to simplify things and lie about them as well as twist them.

Most people have better and/or more pressing things to do than follow all the ins and outs of each story. That’s for political junkies. And although political junkies on the right are usually well aware of what the left is saying because that’s much more difficult to avoid, those on the left can insulate themselves quite easily from the part of the story only the press on the right is covering. And that’s a big part of the plan: to saturate the media and control the “narrative.” The left is confident they can do that successfully.

That sort of confidence is behind actions that otherwise would be puzzling, such as Adam Schiff’s sticking to his script in paraphrasing the Ukraine phone call in a way that can easily be debunked. He did it to get his false insinuations out there and put them in listener’s minds so that they might read them into the story and suspect that’s what Trump really meant. And Schiff also knew that the MSM would cover for him and defend him.

Maybe it will succeed, and maybe it won’t. Time will tell. But there’s certainly no mystery as to why the left works so hard to discredit all news sources on the right, be they bloggers or periodicals or Fox News. The goal is to get the Democrats’ supporters and even people in the middle to consider such sources to be inherently suspect and not worth listening to. They would ban them or deplatform them if they could, and they sometimes succeed in doing so.

I’ve been covering Whistlegate as best I can, but I’m not a team of investigative reporters and I can’t go into everything. I’ve found that the best one-stop source so far seems to be The Federalist, and the best roundup of links to articles from around the net often appears as part of The Morning Report by J.J. Sefton, published early each day at Ace’s.

Neo’s not a he

The New Neo Posted on by

The first couple of months I was blogging I didn’t post a photo of myself. I originally was completely anonymous, and publishing a photo didn’t even cross my mind.

But I could not help but notice that all my readers seemed to assume I was a man. I’m not sure why that was. Perhaps “male” was the default sex for a political blogger, since the majority are male. Perhaps the name of the blog didn’t conjure up a feminine vibe. Perhaps it was my writing style. Perhaps it was my subject matter, which at the very beginning didn’t include anything about dance or fashion or even food.

So I put up the shot of me with the apple, and the rest is history. Minor history, but history nevertheless.

Recently I’ve noticed a dribble of people coming here and calling me “he” again. It didn’t take long for me to hatch a theory as to why. I think it has to do with the way the blog displays on cell phones.

Until I did the redesign over a year ago, my old blog template wasn’t what you’d call mobile-friendly. It used the same format on phones and devices as on desktops, and that meant sometimes that people had to fiddle with it to make it fit, but at least it displayed in exactly the same format as on desktops, the way I wanted it to.

Now with the new template there’s an automatic adjustment that happens when a person views the site on a phone. That’s mostly a good thing. But part of that adjustment is something I don’t like that changes the design: all the extra stuff – the archives and the categories and the search box, as well as my photo – drop down to the bottom of the site. You have to scroll down to find them in the first place, and I doubt most people, especially newcomers, scroll down that far. So for them, my photo is out of sight.

And once again they think I’m a man.