Morning shower, evening shower?

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an article comparing the benefits of morning showers versus evening showers, and why you might choose either (or both).

There are considerations of cleanliness, habit, and wakefulness (it wakes you up in the morning and/or it helps you sleep at night—which seems a bit contradictory to me). But I think I can simplify the whole thing for you: morning people shower in the morning, night people at night.

Now, I haven’t subjected that blanket statement to any empirical scrutiny at all. But as a night person who tends to take night showers unless I’m showering after exercise, and who just about never takes a shower in the morning (unless you define “morning” as after midnight), I think I may be onto something.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…

The New Neo Posted on by

…than are dreamt of in your philosophy:

From a seam in one of these [ancient Australian] hills, a jumble of ancient, orange-Creamsicle rock spills forth: a deposit called the Apex Chert. Within this rock, viewable only through a microscope, there are tiny tubes. Some look like petroglyphs depicting a tornado; others resemble flattened worms…

Last month, researchers lobbed another salvo in the decades-long debate about the nature of these forms. They are indeed fossil life, and they date to 3.465 billion years ago, according to John Valley, a geochemist at the University of Wisconsin. If Valley and his team are right, the fossils imply that life diversified remarkably early in the planet’s tumultuous youth.

The fossils add to a wave of discoveries that point to a new story of ancient Earth. In the past year, separate teams of researchers have dug up, pulverized and laser-blasted pieces of rock that may contain life dating to 3.7, 3.95 and maybe even 4.28 billion years ago. All of these microfossils””or the chemical evidence associated with them””are hotly debated. But they all cast doubt on the traditional tale.

The entire article is well worth reading.

Our knowledge of the geologic and biologic past has been slowly built up by looking at the clues that are left. That knowledge is necessarily imperfect.

When I think of this sort of thing I often recall how little credence was given to the “continental drift” theory of Wegener in my youth. I even wrote about it for a science report while in junior high school. I liked the idea, but probably because it appealed to my esthetic science more than anything—my observations about the way the continental puzzle pieces seemed to fit together. I certainly was not the only one:

Abraham Ortelius (Ortelius 1596), Theodor Christoph Lilienthal (1756), Alexander von Humboldt (1801 and 1845), Antonio Snider-Pellegrini (Snider-Pellegrini 1858), and others had noted earlier that the shapes of continents on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean (most notably, Africa and South America) seem to fit together…

…[T]he similarity of southern continent geological formations had led Roberto Mantovani to conjecture in 1889 and 1909 that all the continents had once been joined into a supercontinent; Wegener noted the similarity of Mantovani’s and his own maps of the former positions of the southern continents…

Alfred Wegener first presented his hypothesis to the German Geological Society on 6 January 1912.[13] His hypothesis was that the continents had once formed a single landmass, called Pangaea, before breaking apart and drifting to their present locations.

Wegener was the first to use the phrase “continental drift” (1912, 1915) (in German “die Verschiebung der Kontinente” ”“ translated into English in 1922) and formally publish the hypothesis that the continents had somehow “drifted” apart. Although he presented much evidence for continental drift, he was unable to provide a convincing explanation for the physical processes which might have caused this drift. His suggestion that the continents had been pulled apart by the centrifugal pseudoforce (Polflucht) of the Earth’s rotation or by a small component of astronomical precession was rejected, as calculations showed that the force was not sufficient.

He had the right idea, but the wrong mechanism. In the 50s and early 60s, when I was learning about this sort of thing, it was still thought to be silly. Sound familiar? [emphasis mine]:

The British geologist Arthur Holmes championed the theory of continental drift at a time when it was deeply unfashionable. He proposed in 1931 that the Earth’s mantle contained convection cells that dissipated radioactive heat and moved the crust at the surface. His Principles of Physical Geology, ending with a chapter on continental drift, was published in 1944.

David Attenborough, who attended university in the second half of the 1940s, recounted an incident illustrating its lack of acceptance then: “I once asked one of my lecturers why he was not talking to us about continental drift and I was told, sneeringly, that if I could prove there was a force that could move continents, then he might think about it. The idea was moonshine, I was informed.”

Things changed in 1968 with the publication of an article entitled “Seismology and the New Global Tectonics”, based on new seismological evidence.

The science on this sort of thing is never settled. That doesn’t mean scientists are charlatans. It just means that there’s always more to be learned and then integrated into present theories or requiring new theories that incorporate the new facts.

Coming attractions: Entebbe movie

The New Neo Posted on by

I was in a movie theater this weekend and saw a coming attraction for “7 Days In Entebbe.” I don’t know what stance the film takes on Palestine vs. Israel; it’s British, so it could be somewhat anti-Israeli and sympathetic to the terrorists.

But the trailer looked good, and it’s an inherently exciting story. It’s been told before, but long ago, and mostly in “made for TV” movies. Here’s the trailer:

Did you see that part where the planes are flying over the water very low (around 1:37)? That’s based on reality; they flew from Israel at a height of about 100 feet in order to evade radar. Maybe those of you who are pilots don’t find that so impressive (I wouldn’t know), but I certainly do.

The entire episode of history was impressive. I’m hoping they stick to reality and don’t start editorializing.

Here are some other fascinating Entebbe facts (as well as some heroic and/or tragic ones), many of which I had not remembered or never knew of in the first place:

It happened on our July 4 bicentennial.

Two of the four hijackers on the plane were Germans.

The four hijackers boarded the plane in Athens, Greece, but were met by four more in Entebbe.

Also these:

US citizen Janet Almog, Frenchwoman Jocelyne Monier (whose husband or boyfriend was Israeli) and French-Israeli dual citizen Jean-Jacques Mimouni, whose name had not been called up during the reading of the original passport-based list, reportedly joined the Israeli hostage group by their own choice.

Kenyan Minister of Agriculture Bruce MacKenzie persuaded Kenyan President Kenyatta to permit Mossad to collect intelligence prior to the operation, and to allow the Israeli Air Force access to the Nairobi airport. In retaliation, Ugandan President Idi Amin ordered Ugandan agents to assassinate MacKenzie. He was killed on 24 May 1978 when a bomb attached to his aircraft exploded. Later, Mossad Chief Director Meir Amit had a forest planted in Israel in MacKenzie’s name.

Israeli firms were involved in building projects in Africa during the 1960s and 1970s and while preparing the raid the Israeli army consulted with Solel Boneh, a large Israeli construction company that had built the terminal where the hostages were held. While planning the military operation the IDF erected a partial replica of the airport terminal with the assistance of civilians who had helped build the original.

And if you ever had any doubt about Idi Amin’s brutality, there’s this:

Dora Bloch, a 74-year-old Israeli who also held British citizenship, was taken to Mulago Hospital in Kampala after choking on a chicken bone. After the raid she was murdered by officers of the Ugandan army, as were some of her doctors and nurses, apparently for trying to intervene. In April 1987, Henry Kyemba, Uganda’s Attorney general and Minister of Justice at the time, told the Uganda Human Rights Commission that Bloch had been dragged from her hospital bed and killed by two army officers on Amin’s orders. Bloch was shot and her body was dumped in the trunk of a car that had Ugandan intelligence services number plates. Her remains were recovered near a sugar plantation 20 miles (32 km) east of Kampala in 1979, after the Ugandan”“Tanzanian War ended Amin’s rule. Amin also ordered the killing of hundreds of Kenyans living in Uganda in retaliation for Kenya’s assistance to Israel in the raid.

[NOTE: The only Israeli killed in the Entebbe raid was Jonatan Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu’s older brother. I wrote about the anti-terrorist activities of the two brothers here.]

Last night I had a dream

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I drove about two hours up north to visit friends, and drove back very late. I was so tired when I got back home that I fell asleep without my usual bedtime ritual (elaborate toothbrushing and flossing, makeup removal and face-tending, various yoga stretches) and had a restless night’s sleep with many dreams that remain vivid.

One of them was this. I was hiking alone up on a ridge in a landscape that looked like many parts of California: dry and parched and hilly/rocky, with small straw-colored grasses and shrubs all around. I had some sort of GPS with me and was following its instructions, but I was also checking out the signs along the trail.

One sign pointed to an alternate route that led downhill, supposedly to a road I could see at the bottom. I decided to take it. But after I’d walked many minutes along that path, it started narrowing and finally came to an end.

All I could think of to do was to climb back up again towards the main trail. But it was rough going because of all the rocks, and of course it was uphill as well. I finally fell to my knees and started laboriously crawling. After quite a bit of that—with the rocks hurting and scraping me—I woke up.

I don’t think the dream was about politics, although someone might interpret it that way. I think it was about bigger things than that—including fear that I’ve taken a wrong path but can’t retrace my steps and go back, either.

Trump’s immigration bill proposal

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s big news, but I haven’t yet written on it.

Why? Because I think it’s just the opening scene in a play that will be revised several times.

Actually, that’s a bad metaphor. It’s not the opening scene; the play has come out in various versions for over a decade (at least, that’s the history I’ll focus on here; it’s actually a much more long-standing issue), as Congress considers a comprehensive immigration bill.

Remember the effort made during George W. Bush’s administration? If you don’t, let’s take a little stroll down memory lane:

The [2007] bill was a compromise based largely on three previous failed immigration reform bills:

—The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act (S. 1033), a bill proposed in May 2005 by Senators Ted Kennedy and John McCain, sometimes referred to as the “McCain-Kennedy or McKennedy Bill.”
—The Comprehensive Enforcement and Immigration Reform Act of 2005 (S. 1438), a bill proposed in July 2005 by Senators John Cornyn and Jon Kyl, sometimes referred to as the “Cornyn-Kyl Bill.”
—The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 (S. 2611), sponsored by Senator Arlen Specter, which was passed in the Senate in May 2006 but never passed in the House.

The bill’s sole sponsor in the Senate was Majority Leader Harry Reid, though it was crafted in large part as a result of efforts by Senators Kennedy, McCain and Kyl, along with Senator Lindsey Graham, and input from President George W. Bush, who strongly supported the bill. For that reason it was referred to in the press by various combinations of these five men’s names, most commonly “Kennedy-Kyl”. A larger group of senators was involved in creating the bill, sometimes referred to as the ‘Gang of 12’. Senator David Vitter of Louisiana led the opposition to the bill, clashing with McCain and Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

The bill never passed, and drew a lot of anger. You can read its suggested provisions here. To go into the details would take a much longer post than I plan to write, but the gist of it was that it established a path to citizenship for every single illegal immigrant then currently residing in the country, although there were certain hoops to jump through. There also were some security provisions:

The bill would have increased enforcement of the United States-Mexico border, including increasing the number of border patrol agents by 20,000 and adding another 370 miles (600 km) of fencing, among others.

And then there was the case of the Gang of Eight in 2013:

…[T]he immigration bill passed the Senate with a strong majority””68”“32, with 14 Republicans joining all Democrats. The United States House of Representatives under Speaker John Boehner did not act on the bill, however, and it expired at the end of the 113th Congress.

You can read the proposals in the bill here. Once again, it provided a long-term path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already residing here (there were many many more changes, but again they’re too numerous to detail). It also purported to increase security (someday):

The bill contains many border security measures, some of which must be implemented before illegal immigrants can adjust from the provisional status to full green card status. However, the DHS Secretary simply must submit a plan for border security within the first six months of the bill in order to initiate the provisional legal status for illegal immigrants. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) explained that whether or not the border is secure will have no impact on the advancement of the legalization of illegal immigrants, saying, “We’re not using border security as an excuse or a block to the path to citizenship. [The Gang of Eight] wants to make sure the border is secure, but not to use it as a barrier to prevent the 11 million from eventually gaining a path to citizenship.”

Those who criticize Boehner as spineless and unconservative probably forget that he was the person who stopped this bill, which had already passed the Senate. His stated reason:

In our conversation last week, I told the president what I have been telling him for months: the American people and their elected officials don’t trust him to enforce the law as written. Until that changes, it is going to be difficult to make progress on this issue.

Obama responded through executive orders in order to circumvent Congress.

Now, take a look at the current proposals under Trump. The emphasis is on security. The visa lottery is eliminated and family chain immigration tightened up somewhat (the latter was done in some of the previous bills, as well). A path to citizenship is provided only for people eligible for DACA.

This is pretty much what one might have predicted of Trump, since (if you were paying attention) he was always waffly on DACA. And the Democrats have done what you might expect. Nancy Pelosi considers it racist, naturally. The basic Democratic response can be summed up this way:

“Dreamers should not be held hostage to President Trump’s crusade to tear families apart and waste billions of American tax dollars on an ineffective wall,” Sen. Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who has fought for protection for participants in the expiring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, said in a statement.

Of course. Trump should just give Dreamers what the Democrats want without asking for anything in exchange, right? I’m sure if the Democrats were in power, they’d have returned the favor by starting with the wall and waiting patiently for the rest.

I wonder whether Trump made this proposal knowing the Democrats would balk. I doubt he’ll make it more amenable to them in response. He might make it less. The problem may be, as with all the other immigration bills, it will be hard to get enough votes to pass it because it is almost impossible to please enough people with any bill. Most of the opinions expressed by the GOP have been supportive, but some Republicans are unhappy with it as well, and the GOP holds only a very small margin in the Senate.

So, what else is new?

The speculation game: the press and Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

Would a photo of Obama with Louis Farrakhan have made any difference in the results of the 2008 election had it been published and not suppressed?

A journalist announced last week that he will publish a photograph of then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D) and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan that he took in 2005 at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting, but did not make public because he believed it would have “made a difference” to Obama’s political future.

The photographer, Askia Muhammad, told the Trice Edney News Wire that he “gave the picture up at the time and basically swore secrecy.”

“But after the nomination was secured and all the way up until the inauguration; then for eight years after he was President, it was kept under cover,” Muhammad said.

Asked whether he thought the photo’s release would have affected Obama’s presidential campaign, Muhammad said, “I insist. It absolutely would have made a difference.”

Here’s the photo:

Photographer Muhammad certainly has gotten a remarkable amount of publicity from his belated admission, but I beg to differ with his evaluation. I submit that it would not have mattered. First of all, a photo is practically meaningless. Politicians pose with people all the time, and it doesn’t necessarily indicate much. The photo was taken in 2005 at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting, which means that most of the black members of Congress were there.

So, big deal. It could even have been used to cry “racism” at those who criticized the meeting.

But even more importantly, if Obama’s two-decades long and very close relationship with Rev. Wright didn’t hurt him, a passing meeting with Farrakhan most definitely wouldn’t have done so.

What I think is more interesting is that the photo was suppressed, and that we’re in a “now it can be told” mode. I guess none of it matters anymore. But I’d love to hear from the people at the LA Times who have continued to sit on a certain video that contained statements by Obama:

John McCain’s campaign is demanding that the Los Angeles Times release a video of a party for a prominent Palestinian activist that Barack Obama attended in 2003.

The Times described the going-away party for former University of Chicago professor, and Obama friend, Rashid Khalidi, in a story in April. The story reported that Palestinians thought they might have a friend in Obama because of his friendships in that community, despite the fact that his positions have never been particularly pro-Palestinian.

“A major news organization is intentionally suppressing information that could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi,” said McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb, citing Obama’s friendship with Khalidi, who is now a professor at Columbia University.

He said the video could, among other things, show how Obama responded to a poem recited at the party accusing Israel of “terrorism” and warning of consequences for U.S. support for Israel, which Goldfarb described as “hate speech.”

Khalidi is a controversial figure, reviled by pro-Israel activists, though not a marginal one. A former professor at the University of Chicago, he’s now Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia, and respected by many in academia. He’s been criticized most for saying that Palestinians have a right to resist Israeli occupation and has been described as a former P.L.O. spokesman, a label he has denied.

The media protected Obama and fought his battles for him. There is little question that it mattered in general, whether or not the photo of Farrakhan would have made any difference.

The Emperor’s New Clothes: Trump at Davos

The New Neo Posted on by

No, Trump’s not the emperor without clothes. He’s the kid who points and says the obvious about the naked emperor, “But he hasn’t got anything on!”

That was my reaction yesterday when I read what Trump had said about Palestine and Israel at Davos. Trump was not reading from a speech or prepared notes:

That money [from the US] is not going to [the Palestinians] unless they sit down and negotiate peace, because I can tell you that Israel does want to make peace, and they’re going to have to want to make peace, too, or we’re going to have nothing to do with it any longer.

It may not be very elegantly said—it wasn’t very elegantly said—but boy, did it get my attention, and I bet it got the Palestinians’ attention too. Had no one in US government ever said this sort of thing before? If so, I couldn’t recall it. Trump said he’d wondered, too, and asked the question [emphasis mine]:

If you look back at the various peace proposals, and they are endless, and I spoke to some of the people involved. And I said, ”˜Did you ever talk about the vast amount of funds, money that we give to the Palestinians? You know, we give hundreds of millions of dollars.’ And they said, ”˜We never talk about it,‘” Trump said. “Well, we do talk about it. When they disrespected us a week ago by not allowing our great vice president to see them, and we give them hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and support, tremendous numbers, numbers that nobody understands, that money is on the table.”

So previous negotiators had never talked about it. Why? Probably a lot of reasons, but chief among my guesses would be these:

(1) Threatening to withdraw financial aid is not what diplomats do.
(2) Europe certainly wouldn’t like it, nor would the vast majority of the pro-Palestinian world (which is the vast majority of the world, if the UN General Assembly is any indication).
(3) Previous administrations cared very much about #2.

Trump is not a diplomat. He’s a businessman. He promised that he knew how to make deals, and he deals like a businessman and not like a diplomat. Businessmen are very money-conscious, and they know that money is leverage they can use. If you’re negotiating with someone who is financially dependent on you—duh!—you can use that money for leverage.

This tough-love technique may not work, of course. But nothing else has so far—nothing, not all the diplomats in the world have been able to make the situation better in that neck of the woods. If Trump could, it would be astounding as well as a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Trump had more to say:

“The hardest subject they had to talk about was Jerusalem,” he said. “We took Jerusalem off the table, so we don’t have to talk about it anymore. They never got past Jerusalem. We took it off the table. We don’t have to talk about it anymore.” He then turned to Netanyahu and said: You won one point, and you’ll give up some other points later on in the negotiation ”” if it ever takes place. I don’t know that it ever will take place.”

Asked by The Times of Israel whether Jerusalem being “off the table” meant no part of the city would be part of a future Palestinian state, Trump responded, “Next question.”

Interesting.

Netanyahu had something to say, too. And it seems he agrees with me about the “emperor’s new clothes” aspect of what Trump had said:

People say that this pushes peace backward,” Netanyahu said. “I say it pushes peace forward, because it recognizes history, it recognizes the present reality. And peace can only be built on the basis of truth.”

Parallel media universes: the MSM is obsessed with Trump and Mueller

The New Neo Posted on by

While the right covers this, that, and the other thing, the MSM and the left is obsessed with the NY Times’ report that Trump tried to fire Mueller and was talked out of it. Go to memeorandum and you’ll see what I mean.

Once again, they seem to think this is some sort of smoking gun that will sink Trump. And they are waiting with bated breath, of course, for Mueller’s report. Meanwhile, Trump calls it “fake news.”

The problem for the Times at this point is that, even though Trump is certainly capable of lying through his teeth about whether or not he seriously considered firing Mueller, the Times may have even less credibility. That’s what happens when you cry “wolf” over and over and over.

This particular story is just the latest iteration of a long series of stories saying the same thing (you can read about some of the history here). I am virtually certain that most of my liberal friends believe the stories are all true (if they follow them at all, that is).

I do not believe they are true, although they certainly might be true, and I do not believe that they are not true. There is simply no way to know. But the MSM’s track record on this sort of thing is bad. Their undisguised and virulent animus towards Trump, and the number of their previous Trump-critical stories that have never been confirmed or have turned out to be flat wrong, make it difficult for people who are not already on the left to believe them.

But I have an additional question. Let’s say that the Times report is true. Let’s say that Trump wanted to fire Mueller last June and was talked out of it by, among other things, his counsel’s threat to resign. What is the news here? The idea that Trump might have some autocratic impulses isn’t news. The idea that he might be enraged that Mueller was investigating him isn’t news, either; I’m hard-pressed to come up with any president I can think of who would take it with equanimity and a smile. The fact that Trump was talked out of that autocratic impulse makes it seem (to me, at least) as though his desire to fire Mueller either wasn’t incredibly strong to begin with and/or that he realized the repercussions would be worse than the problem. That latter possibility makes him sound reasonable, or at least amenable to persuasion/reason on a practical basis.

And that’s if you believe the Times’ story.

My war with graphics, and graphics’ war with me

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve written before about my problem with cartoons.

But I have a similar problem with graphics. The other day while working on the new blog site I noticed that my dashboard was one of those streamlined things so popular today—mostly because of the popularity of cellphones—where little symbols have totally replaced words. The dashboard has at least twenty symbols running along the side, and they all are about the same size and give few clues as to what they mean, which (for me, at least) makes it hard to differentiate among them.

The graphics for “links” and “comments” are so ubiquitous—a chain for links, and a sort of cartoon bubble for comments—that even I, with my graphics dyslexia, know what they mean. But the rest are not the least bit intuitive and I have no interest in learning them. What’s wrong with words, good old-fashioned words?

Luckily, there’s a way to make the words reappear on the dashboard. But of course, in order to do that you have to search the symbols-only version and find it. It’s a tiny little triangle/arrow at the bottom, and once you click on it up spring the missing words and all’s well. But the default position is now the graphics one.

Perhaps I’m revealing my advanced age by saying all of this. But I also sometimes have a problem with the graphics on containers. You know, the things that tell you how to open them. Sometimes words are even included and it still can be confusing.

For example, I was making a smoothie today. I always put frozen fruit in them and then blend the whole thing up. Today I was opening a large new package of frozen fruit and encountered this graphic. I only took the photo after I had opened it, so the little tear there makes it obvious how it’s done. But try to imagine it without the tear to guide you; try to imagine the oval with the arrow is whole. What would you do?

I’ll tell you what I did. I assumed that the arrow pointed to something below the oval. Perhaps that little thing that looked like a string, that might be sort of embedded in the packaging and that you need to pull? I’ve encountered packaging like that before. But no, the string stubbornly defied my best efforts to pry it loose.

Perhaps that’s because it wasn’t a string, but a drawing of a cherry stem, cleverly placed to fool the graphically challenged like me.

It turns out that the thing to pull was a hidden tab above the arrow—yes, above the arrow that pointed down. The arrow apparently meant “look above this arrow that’s pointing down and pull the thing above the arrow down.”

Now I ask you, does that make sense?

FBI, DOJ: Lost and found

The New Neo Posted on by

Those texts from Strzok and Page that had gotten lost?

They’ve been found!:

Here’s how:

In a letter sent to congressional committees, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said his office “succeeded in using forensic tools to recover text messages from FBI devices, including text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page that were sent or received between December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017.”

Ah, so the DOJ managed to use forensic tools to find some text messages the FBI couldn’t seem to recover. What a novel idea! I guess we can’t expect the FBI to know what forensic tools are, can we?

And have all the texts been recovered, or some of them are still missing?:

“Our effort to recover any additional text messages is ongoing,” Horowitz said. “We will provide copies of the text messages that we recover from these devices to the Department so that the Department’s leadership can take any management action it deems appropriate.”

Fox News has learned from U.S. government officials that the inspector general recovered the texts by taking possession of “at least four” phones belonging to Strzok and Page.

They were busy little beavers, weren’t they (Strzok and Page, not the FBI)? Who knows whether all the texts will ever be recovered, or whether the FBI and DOJ are aware of all the methods the lovers used to communicate.