What could make a difference in Iran, and why it would be so hard to achieve it

The New Neo Posted on by

The most recent protests in Iran seem to have been successfully put down. This is a sad but not surprising thing, since Iran’s government is tyrannical and willing to use its muscle to stay in power:

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced that the regime has squashed the uprising that took place the last few weeks. The protests left 22 people dead and 3,700 arrested.

The regime also disrupted internet communication, but more about that later.

Every time there are such demonstrations in Iran I have a glimmer of hope for the country although I remain profoundly pessimistic about the possibility for overthrowing an Iranian government that’s clamped down on the country for nearly forty years. I was also musing on how the revolution of 1979 managed to succeed where recent movements have failed, and in doing so I reread some of my much earlier posts chronicling that 1979 revolt. I urge you to read them: Part I (Khomeini), Part II (Bakhtiar), and Part III (Carter), as well as this one about Khomeini as a con man.

Here are some of the differences between then and now. It’s not meant to be an exclusive list.

Khomeini was an extremely popular and charismatic figure who attracted millions in the street on his return to the country from years of exile. That made for a huge popular movement in 1979 composed of his religious supporters. But that group was also joined by a large number of leftists and human rights democrats. Each of those latter two groups thought they would be able to use the mullahs in the revolution and then control them when it came time to form the government—but of course the bitter laugh was on the leftists and the democrats, who were ruthlessly crushed.

Khomeini was also smart—strategically and politically smart—and he knew how to say just the right thing to lull those two groups (and most of the West) into thinking he wouldn’t be much trouble for them (in that con man post, I give some examples of how he did this).

In addition to the personality of Khomeini and his particular gifts, Iran also had a Shah who’d earned the enmity of many groups by killing hundreds of protestors, and by modernizing the country. The first approach (violence and/or imprisonment of protesters, much like the current mullahs’ reaction to the recent demonstrations) alienated groups two and three (leftists and human rights democrats), while the second approach (modernization) alienated group one, the ultra-religious.

The turning point for the Shah was reached in several ways: President Carter put pressure on him to release hundreds of political prisoners in the name of human rights. Afterwards, when that softening had emboldened the anti-Shah forces, the Shah cracked down on them again, thus angering several groups once more. But the crucial turning point was when army and police turned on him and refused to treat the protestors as they had in the past. After the Shah resigned under pressure, Iran’s temporary leader Bakhtiar—an anti-Shah human-rights-advocating democrat—let Khomeini back into the country:

On Bakhtiar’s appointment as the new Prime Minister, Khomeini condemned him, of course, from his exile in France. But Khomeini continued to live his charmed life; Bakhtiar allowed him to return to Iran shortly thereafter. The reason? A combination of Bakhtiar’s own devotion to freedom of speech, and the Shah’s old conundrum: Khomeini was so popular that to try to ban him would cause such public unrest in Iran that it seemed counterproductive. In essence, Bakhtiar, although a far different ruler than the Shah, faced the same dilemma; he resolved it in favor of not suppressing the opposition.

Allowing Khomeini back into the country was like lighting a match in an oxygen-saturated room.

You can see the differences between then and now. At present there doesn’t seem to be any particular charismatic figure who commands great allegiance and respect among large numbers of people, unlike in 1979. Now the demonstrators can use the internet to organize, but the government also uses the internet quite effectively as a tool of repression:

Iranian authorities shut down social media channels and disrupted internet access as protests against the government spread across the country over the past two weeks, showing an unprecedented ability for the nation to shut down dissent online, according to a new human rights report.

The crackdown showed that the Iranian government has developed an increasingly sophisticated ability to restrict, block, and monitor internet, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).

“As the government shut down access to the global internet, protestors desperately pleaded for a restoration of internet access,” Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the CHRI, told Newsweek.

This is their lifeline to the outside world and to each other.” Ghaemi said the Iranian government wants to show off that “it can retain its repressive grip on society.”

Social media platforms like Instagram and the Telegram messaging app, the main methods of communication protesters used to mobilize other demonstrators to join them on the streets, were blocked during the protests. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), and other tools Iranians frequently use to circumvent censorship and access banned platforms like YouTube and Facebook, were also blocked. On December 30, the government blocked all Iranians from the internet for at least a half an hour.

It is my distinct impression that the current anti-government movement isn’t as large, or at least not the current active movement, compared to 1979. It consists (as far as I know) of mainly three factions with a certain amount of overlap—what’s left of the left; the human rights advocates, many of them young, who want more liberty; and those who are dissatisfied with the economy (is that the largest group?). Minus the large religious faction that fed the revolution of 1979, I wonder whether these protests can ever reach critical mass. And I wonder what (if anything) would cause the police and army (especially the elite guards) to turn on the government, this time—the economy, perhaps?

Nor are the mullahs being pressured—at least, not successfully pressured—to give people more rights, a la Jimmy Carter. Economic sanctions on Iran were lifted in 2016, post-Iran-deal. Nevertheless, they are doing poorly economically, but mainly because of the leaders’ failure to throw the population enough fish to keep them happy enough:

…[T]he lifting of sanctions on Iran in January 2016 has failed to deliver an economic boom.

Instead, the non-oil part of the economy has continued to struggle, with unemployment officially put at around 12.5 percent ”“ in reality, much higher for Iran’s millions of young people ”“ and inflation running at nearly 10 percent.

“There is a crisis of expectations in Iran,” said Tamer Badawi, a research fellow at the Istanbul-based Al-Sharq Forum. “It is a deep sense of economic frustration.”

To ease that discontent, Rouhani may need to spend more government money on creating jobs, restrain inflation by supporting the rial exchange rate and do more to eradicate the widespread corruption which angers the protesters.

But all of those actions would involve policy change. Rouhani has been pursuing a conservative budget policy to bring Iran’s volatile state finances under control, part of his effort to create an attractive environment for foreign investors. Meanwhile, fighting corruption would risk a backlash from powerful interests hurt by a crackdown…

Emadi [Iranian economist based in London] blamed much of the economy’s poor performance on a deep-rooted structural issue: the influence of paramilitary bodies such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as religious institutions on business.

Those interests, which according to some estimates control over 60 percent of assets in Iran, generally do not pay taxes and stifle competition from small private companies, blocking job creation, he said.

More:

Indeed, Iran has not produced up to its maximum OPEC quota for some months now. The industry needs serious investment to improve, but Iran does not have the cash or the equipment it needs. The Iranian people see their country’s money wasted on military engagements and terrorism abroad instead of being put to work for their own economic wellbeing, and this has been a major complaint of the protestors.

For Iran’s oil industry, foreign investment ”“ especially from oil companies with the expertise and capital to work on Iran’s mature oil fields ”” is needed. Many foreign companies expressed interest in working in Iran after sanctions were lifted, but they have found it very difficult to sign contacts with the NIOC. The Iranian government has established rules and policies that make it difficult and unattractive for foreign businesses.

In a way, then, it may be that lifting the sanctions has had a paradoxical effect. Poor economic conditions in the country prior to that could easily be blamed by the mullahs on the sanctions and the West. Now they themselves have been exposed as the cause of the problem.

I don’t see much changing in Iran until unrest—for whatever reason—reaches such overwhelming proportions that millions upon millions of people demonstrate and risk death, and the police and army finally turn on the mullah-controlled government and refuse to cooperate in stopping the protests. But I make no predictions as to when that might happen—except that I don’t think it will be any time soon, and maybe it will be never.

Immigration deals are in the works

The New Neo Posted on by

But we have little idea what they are or what their ultimate fate will be.

More here—or about as much, which is to say next to nothing that isn’t very changeable:

A bipartisan group of senators, led by Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), said they were nearing a deal that resembled the framework Trump laid out for Democrats and Republicans ”” legal protections for dreamers; changes in security along the U.S.-Mexico border; restrictions on family migration policy, which some conservatives deride as “chain migration”; and changes to a diversity lottery system that grants visas to 55,000 people from countries with low immigration each year…

Durbin, Flake and Graham have been part of ultimately unsuccessful bipartisan immigration talks that date back to at least 2006.

In a joint news conference Wednesday…Trump was asked if he would support a DACA bill that did not include money for the border wall he has proposed.

“No, no, no,” he replied. “It’s got to include the wall. We need the wall for security. We need the wall for safety. We need the wall to stop the drugs from pouring in. I would imagine the people in the room, both Democrat and Republican ”” I really believe they are going to come up with a solution to the DACA problem that’s been going on for a long time, and maybe beyond that, immigration as a whole.”

I’d take it.

But I wonder whether, if Trump concedes on DACA, his base will be very, very angry or surprised. They shouldn’t be surprised, because—as I’ve indicated before—he’s always given contradictory signals on DACA, even during the campaign.

Political sex scandal du jour

The New Neo Posted on by

I couldn’t be more weary of these sex scandals. The latest concerns a guy who’s never been on my radar screen until today: Missouri governor Eric Greitens, who is alleged to have had an affair in 2015 and threatened to expose the woman if she ever revealed it:

In a recording obtained by News 4, a woman says she had a sexual encounter with Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens and that he tried to blackmail her to keep the encounter quiet.

The details were provided to News 4 by the woman’s ex-husband, claiming the sexual relationship happened between his now ex-wife and Greitens in March 2015. News 4 is not naming the woman and she has not made an on-the-record comment about the story.

According to the ex-husband, the recording was made just days after Greitens’ and the woman’s first sexual encounter. And also that Greitens took a photograph during the encounter to use as “blackmail” according to the ex-husband.

The affair was consensual and seemingly brief. That’s not the issue so much as the purported threat involving the photo, which supposedly no longer exists. The governor has admitted the affair but denied the rest. The woman herself refuses to go on the record, so the blackmail story rests on a recording of a phone call (a recording made by the husband, apparently) in which she’s telling the story to her then-husband, but soon-to-be ex-husband.

Was she telling the truth in that phone call? Maybe. We have absolutely no way of knowing. I do know, however, that this kind of situation—affairs, confessions to husbands or wives, etc.—is one in which people often lie through their teeth. As I said, I have no idea whether this particular woman was lying or truthful. But what might her motivation have been to lie? To get her husband’s sympathy and make herself out to be a victim.

She apparently didn’t know she was being recorded, either, for what that’s worth.

I have no idea how this one will shake down.

[NOTE: I wrote that Greitens had never been on my radar screen till today. But then I decided to do a search on the blog and discovered I had written one post involving him. But it wasn’t about Greitens the politician; the post pre-dated his entrance into politics. It was about his training as a Navy SEAL, about which he once wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal.]

The pup and the bird of prey

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a story about a dog snatched by an eagle:

Felipe Rodriguez says he thought he was hallucinating when an eagle snatched his sister’s little white dog from her yard, flapped its massive wings and disappeared over the trees.

Did he really just see that?

He had. Zoey the 8-pound bichon frise was gone, taken by a hungry raptor Tuesday afternoon not 50 feet from his sister’s house on the banks of the Lehigh River in Pennsylvania, Rodriguez said.

“It seemed like something from the ’Wizard of Oz,’” he told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “I’m a city boy. This doesn’t happen in my world.”

Zoey was playing in the fenced yard when he heard a loud screech, hurried to the door and looked out.

“The bird was holding onto the dog. There was flapping of wings and then it was gone,” said Rodriguez, a 50-year-old healthcare executive visiting from Chicago.

Let’s pause to check out that “Wizard of Oz” reference:

The special effects there are quite primitive compared to today, when it would all be done through computer animation. And yet I love the more primitive effects, which still send a shiver of fear through me in a magical way that modern, more realistic-looking movies don’t even begin to summon.

As in “The Wizard,” Zoey’s story has a happy ending:

Zoey’s rescuer was Christina Hartman, 51, who said she was driving on a snow-covered back road when she spotted a furry white lump ahead and pulled over to investigate.

“I notice this little frozen dog, icicles hanging from all over. It could hardly move,” Hartman said.

She scooped up the whimpering pooch, wrapped her in a blanket and took her home, feeding the dog two bowls of chicken-and-rice soup. Gradually, the bichon warmed up and began to show some spunk.

…She spotted Newhard’s public Facebook post Wednesday morning ”” Newhard had uploaded a photo of Zoey ”” and made an excited call.

“I said, ”˜It’s a miracle! I have your dog!’”

Zoey had bruises and a few missing patches of fur. It’s not clear how far the eagle might have carried the dog, but Rodriguez said he can’t believe Zoey survived.

“She is not really herself, but she is getting lots of love,” his sister, Newhard, texted the AP late Wednesday. “She doesn’t want to go out. … I really can’t blame her.”

Zoey must think there are eagles everywhere. My guess is that the dog was too heavy for the eagle and after a while she was dropped.

I have a special interest in this story, because I owned a little white dog much like a bichon in size and temperament. We had a fenced-in yard, too, and when he was a pup he was gamboling around in it one day when a workman came to look at our yard.

I can’t remember what the man was there for—I think it was an estimate on work that had something to do with trees—but he was a very laconic New Englander of the old-fashioned type. As he looked around the yard, he pointed at my adorable pup, who was no more than seven pounds at the time although full-grown he ended up being about 23.

“Better watch out,” the man said.

I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked.

“Hawk could get ‘im,” he answered.

Much like Rodriguez, I was a city girl, and that didn’t happen in my world. But I could well imagine it happening, and so until my dog got big enough to fend for himself, I watched him like—like a hawk.

Here’s a photo of me holding him, probably taken when he was around 2 or 3. What a great dog he was! He lived for about fifteen years [1988-2003]:

Trump in control

The New Neo Posted on by

So, what’s up with Trump’s televised conference with Congressional leaders on bipartisan immigration reform?

You can watch the video here; it’s close to an hour long.

This can be looked at in one or both of two ways: content or process. I explained the difference here:

Content is just what it sounds like: the subject matter about which two people [or more]…are arguing [or speaking]. “Did you do the dishes last night?” Process is everything else””for example, the emotion with which something is said, the type of vocabulary used, tone, repetition, body language, and the unspoken subtext.

Rush Limbaugh believes the meeting was all about process, and that listeners should pretty much ignore the content:

It was a brilliantly conceived and flawlessly executed rebuttal to this stupid Wolff book. The pictures tell the tale. Trump is in the room dominating it, controlling it. He is cooperative. He is open. He’s tolerant. He’s understanding. He’s in total command of over 45 minutes of televised meeting on immigration. He is totally informed on the issues. He’s going back and forth with the Democrats on whatever mundane aspect of it they bring up. He is in total command of his position on this…

It was not about immigration.

It was to counter the Wolff book…

Just look at it this way, folks, if you’re nervous. What happened today really had nothing to do with immigration. He didn’t say anything today that he can’t walk back. He didn’t say anything today that he’s gonna have to walk back, either. It’s all good. In fact, it’s better than that. Wait till you see the Democrats when they figure out what just happened to them.

Or is Trump getting ready to betray his base on DACA? William Jacobson agrees with Limbaugh on the process part, but thinks “maybe” on the content part:

Having the networks broadcast extensive coverage of Trump being “presidential” was an amazing counter-narrative to the demented line pushed by Democrats and the media that Trump is a bumbling idiot who barely can string more than 3 words together and should be removed under the 25th Amendment. People got to watch him in action running a meeting and in control, the master of ceremonies presiding over the congressional leadership from both parties…

BUT, BUT, BUT

As I was watching it, all I could keep thinking was, “here comes amnesty.”

The code words were all there, particularly “comprehensive immigration reform.”

The “best” view I can take of this is that a DACA deal gets done without amnesty now, since Trump has dangled something bigger down the road, and in exchange Dems have to agree to fund the Wall and other substantial restrictions on chain migration and so on. Then nothing happens on “comprehensive” immigration reform.

The “worst” view is that the Amnesty Train is rolling down the tracks, and to use a metaphor from the campaign, Trump will shoot his core campaign promise on immigration in the middle of 5th Avenue, figuring his base will stick with him anyway.

My opinion? I’ll tackle the content part first. I believe that Trump has long been unpredictable on DACA and some areas of immigration—what I’ve often called “mutable.” Even during the campaign, but also during earlier days of his presidency, Trump said many things about DACA, some of them contradictory (see this).

For example, here’s what I wrote in September of 2017, and it still stands:

I will repeat something I’ve said many times before, something that should be obvious to anyone who’s been following Trump from the start of his candidacy two (count ’em, two!) long years ago: he goes back and forth on things. He sends out mixed signals, or at the very least ambiguous, hard-to-read signals.

His admirers say it’s because he’s cagey. His detractors say it’s because he’s an idiot and/or a liar. I say he’s no idiot, and he’s sometimes very cagey, sometimes flat-out lying, and sometimes changes his mind. On DACA he’s been very waffley from the start. On the wall not so waffley, although he always talked about that great big beautiful door, too.

We’ll see.

Now, for the process part. I agree that Trump did this to show how in-control and rational he is. And that message would come across to those who are watching. I doubt most voters are watching; just the political junkies. I think it would take a lot more than this, even for those who are watching who previously thought Trump was senile/stupid/crazy, to actually change minds on the subject.

I figured, even before I read the commentary, that most of the Trump critics who watched the meeting would say that maybe Trump could sustain something like this for a little while for show, but in private he’s just as senile/stupid/crazy as Wolff said he was, and more; also that they would emphasize the fact that he’s waffling on immigration, in order to fan the flames of anger against Trump among his base.

Here’s how the WaPo handled it:

55 minutes at the table: Trump tries to negotiate and prove stability

He acted the part, listening intently and guiding the conversation with the control of a firm but open-minded executive. He spoke the part, offering a mix of jesting bon mots and high-minded appeals for bipartisanship. And he looked the part, down to the embroidered “45” on his starched white shirt cuff.

In short, President Trump on Tuesday tried to show that he could do his job.

Just an act? Just an attempt?

Then there’s this, where the authors quickly switch to content from process:

And for the 55 minutes that the scene unfolded on television, the president demonstrated stability, although not necessarily capability. In trying to erase one set of queries (is he up for the job and a “very stable genius,” as he claimed on Twitter?), he inadvertently opened another: What, exactly, is going to be in that immigration bill?

“Inadvertently”? Are they trying to say that the entire content of the meeting—what’s going to be in the immigration bill—was accidental on Trump’s part?

The article continues:

And while Trump offered captivating television drama, he also muddled through the policy by seeming to endorse divergent positions, including simply protecting the dreamers or a plan contingent upon funding for his long-promised wall at the nation’s southern border.

Anyone who has watched Trump for any amount of time, even those who detest him, should be aware that what happened here is not a case of “muddling through.” One thing Trump knows how to do very well is to purposely talk out of both sides of his mouth to confuse and befuddle observers and opponents. It may even be that the authors of the article are well aware of this tendency, but want their readers to think that Trump is the befuddled one, muddling through.

[NOTE: What’s the definition of “muddle through”? “to manage to do something although you are not organized or prepared to do it.”

I really don’t think that’s what’s going on here.

Towards the end of the article, it says this: “As he excused the press corps, Trump said: ‘I hope we’ve given you enough material. That should cover you for about two weeks.’”

What a muddler!]

South Korean leader credits Trump—and so does Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the story:

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has credited his US counterpart Donald Trump with making a “huge” contribution to bringing the North and South together for landmark talks…

“War must not break out on the Korean Peninsula again,” Moon said. “My goal is to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem and solidify peace during my term.”

I have no idea what this will lead to, but it’s big enough news that not only is CNN covering it in the article I linked, but so are ABC (“I extend my gratitude to President Trump,” said Moon), the NY Times, and other MSM outlets that aren’t ordinarily into giving Trump much credit. I guess when Moon gives the credit, it’s news.

The Times couldn’t resist a subtle dig about Trump’s ego, though:

His comment reflected a tactful maneuver for Mr. Moon: stroking the ego of the American leader, who has claimed credit for the inter-Korean dialogue, while easing fears in Washington and among his conservative critics at home that in his eagerness for dialogue, he may be too accommodating to North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un.

In a post on Twitter last week, Mr. Trump asserted that North Korea had gone to the negotiating table because he had been “firm, strong and willing to commit our total ”˜might’ against the North.” Mr. Moon agreed on Wednesday that Mr. Kim’s decision to start a dialogue with the South could be a sign that the Trump administration’s policy of applying maximum sanctions and pressure was working.

After Trump wrote that tweet last week, it was followed up by some remarks I think very interesting (this was prior to Moon’s public statements thanking Trump):

Speaking to reporters at Camp David in Maryland on Saturday, at the end of a week marked by the publication of an explosive book about his administration and his mental capacity for his job [the writer can’t resist adding that reference, just to remind us], the president was asked if he would speak to Kim on the telephone.

“Sure, I believe in talking,” he said. “”¦ Absolutely I would do that, no problem with that at all.”

Asked if that meant there would be no prerequisites for such talk, the president said: “That’s not what I said at all.”

Trump added: “[Kim] knows I’m not messing around, not even a little bit, not even 1%. He understands that…

“If something good can happen and come out of those talks it would be a great thing for all of humanity. That would be a great thing for the world. Very important.”

Trump also said President Moon Jae-in of South Korea had thanked him “very much for my tough stance” and added that previous US governments “you know, for 25 years they haven’t been using a tough stance, they’ve been giving everything”.

“You have to have a certain attitude and you have to be prepared to do certain things and I’m totally prepared to do that,” he said…

He added, “and it’s not just a stance.”

Does that sound like a man who’s cognitively challenged? Not to me, it doesn’t. It’s certainly not elegant in terms of expression, but it’s an improvement on the claptrap that’s been issued about Korea by Democratic and Republican administrations for the past several decades.

Breitbart bids Bannon “buh-bye”

The New Neo Posted on by

Buh-bye:

Stephen K. Bannon has stepped down from Breitbart News Network, where he served as Executive Chairman since 2012.

Bannon and Breitbart will work together on a smooth and orderly transition.

Bannon said, “I’m proud of what the Breitbart team has accomplished in so short a period of time in building out a world-class news platform.”

According to Breitbart CEO Larry Solov, “Steve is a valued part of our legacy, and we will always be grateful for his contributions, and what he has helped us to accomplish.”

Does anyone think that Bannon’s stepping down was the least bit voluntary?

His fall reminds me of the Emerson maxim: “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” Bannon is perhaps more ruthless than smart, because somehow he seems to have thought he could strike at Trump and Trump’s family and come out the winner.

By the way, if you don’t get the reference in the post’s title, it’s from this:

Guess what? David Brooks can’t stand Trump…

The New Neo Posted on by

…but he doesn’t think Trump is crazy or demented.

This rates as unusual.

From Brooks:

It’s almost as if there are two White Houses. There’s the Potemkin White House, which we tend to focus on: Trump berserk in front of the TV, the lawyers working the Russian investigation and the press operation. Then there is the Invisible White House that you never hear about, which is getting more effective at managing around the distracted boss.

I sometimes wonder if the Invisible White House has learned to use the Potemkin White House to deke us while it changes the country.

I mention these inconvenient observations because the anti-Trump movement, of which I’m a proud member, seems to be getting dumber. It seems to be settling into a smug, fairy tale version of reality that filters out discordant information. More anti-Trumpers seem to be telling themselves a “Madness of King George” narrative: Trump is a semiliterate madman surrounded by sycophants who are morally, intellectually and psychologically inferior to people like us.

I’d like to think it’s possible to be fervently anti-Trump while also not reducing everything to a fairy tale.

That seems to me to be a reasonable way of looking at it, for those who remain “fervently anti-Trump.” I’ve already expressed my own position—which is that Trump is far better as president than I expected, although his character flaws remain.

But although I laud Brooks for his relatively reasonable approach among “fervent anti-Trumpers,” I wish he’d managed to look at Trump’s predecessor Obama without reducing him (or rather, elevating him) to “a fairy tale” of a very different sort.

To refresh your memory, see this.

Robert Louis Stevenson, changer

The New Neo Posted on by

Robert Louis Stevenson is one of those writers I connect with childhood, where he loomed large.

A Child’s Garden of Verses and Treasure Island, of course (which I now see were published in the same year), and then the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. And although the only works of his I’ve actually read are those for children, his oeuvre was certainly not limited to that. It included musical compositions for the flageolet (which is a sort of recorder and not a bean, although beans have been called “the musical fruit“).

Stevenson and Longfellow seemed to have long ago merged in my head. But in an effort to differentiate them (sparked by seeing this painting earlier today) I decided to do a bit of research on Stevenson. Lo and behold, I discovered much interesting stuff in his Wiki profile. He was quite the youthful rebel in his twenties, in a way that sounds mighty familiar:

His dress became more Bohemian; he already wore his hair long, but he now took to wearing a velveteen jacket and rarely attended parties in conventional evening dress. Within the limits of a strict allowance, he visited cheap pubs and brothels. More importantly, he had come to reject Christianity and declared himself an atheist. In January 1873, his father came across the constitution of the LJR (Liberty, Justice, Reverence) Club, of which Stevenson and his cousin Bob were members, which began: “Disregard everything our parents have taught us”. Questioning his son about his beliefs, he discovered the truth, leading to a long period of dissension with both parents…

As for politics, the following should sound extremely familiar:

Stevenson remained a staunch Tory for most of his life…During his college years, he briefly identified himself as a “red-hot socialist”. By 1877, at only twenty-six years of age and before having written most of his major fictional works, Stevenson reflected: “For my part, I look back to the time when I was a Socialist with something like regret. I have convinced myself (for the moment) that we had better leave these great changes to what we call great blind forces: their blindness being so much more perspicacious than the little, peering, partial eyesight of men…

But Stevenson was not too happy about the change, although he remained a conservative:

Now I know that in thus turning Conservative with years, I am going through the normal cycle of change and travelling in the common orbit of men’s opinions. I submit to this, as I would submit to gout or gray hair, as a concomitant of growing age or else of failing animal heat; but I do not acknowledge that it is necessarily a change for the better””I dare say it is deplorably for the worse.”

If you read his Wiki entry or other accounts of his activities, you’ll see that Stevenson suffered from ill health almost continually but lived an incredibly varied and energetic life not just in terms of writing (and of music: “over 123 original musical compositions or arrangements, including solos, duets, trios and quartets for various combinations of flageolet, flute, clarinet, violin, guitar, mandolin, and piano”), but he was especially well-traveled in an age in which travel was a long and difficult undertaking. He lived in many lands, including California, and ended up in Samoa. His literary reputation has waxed and waned over the years and then waxed again.

It’s shocking to read an account of Stevenson’s life and all his accomplishments and realize that he died at the ripe old age of only 44. He packed quite a lot into it, and he himself said towards the end of his life, “sick and well, I have had splendid life of it, grudge nothing, regret very little .”

Have you had trouble dating checks “2018”?

The New Neo Posted on by

Of course, these days fewer people even write checks. Autopay has taken over, and credit cards are ubiquitous.

But I still write the odd check here and there, and in previous years I’ve often had a problem with the transition in January from one year to another.

“2018” seems ridiculously advanced, timewise. But for some reason I’ve had no trouble at all writing it without hesitation or thought. It’s as though 2017 was some sort of placeholder, an awkward prime number just waiting impatiently for smooth balanced 2018 to succeed it.

I’ve felt that 2017 is a prime, but I hadn’t checked to find out for sure till now. Sure enough, it is. And not just any prime.

Time’s acceleration

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t quite buy this, although I do think it’s harder to experience new things as one gets older. Or, at least, new fun things:

The older you get the more the days seem to fly by. Why is that?

Science is not short of explanations. “The more detailed the memory, the longer the moment seems to last,” the New Yorker’s Burkhard Bilger writes. “This explains why we think that time speeds up when we grow older,” neuroscientist David Eagleman tells him. Less is new and noteworthy for adults, so we remember less and time goes faster…

Part of the reason your 30s seem half as long as your 20s (I’m terrified of how long my 40s will seem), according to a new study out of the University of Kansas, is ‘chunking.’…dividing your experiences into larger categories or “chunks.”…

When the researchers conducted a series of lab experiments that encouraged subjects to think of their lives in chunks – asking them to draw pie charts of their activities in the current day or year, for example – they reported that time seemed to be passing more quickly.

But the explanation that makes by far the most sense to me is something I read about some time ago (I forget where) which is more mathematically oriented. It’s the idea that each unit of time—say, a year—represents a smaller and smaller fraction of your entire life as you get older, and seems to pass more quickly in part for that reason. When you’re four years old a year is 25% of the life you’ve already lived. When you’re twenty years old a year is 5%. Whey you’re fifty years old it’s 2%. You get the idea.

As you get older each unit of time is also a larger fraction of the time you have left. For example, take a man who turns 70 today. If you plug those figures into a life expectancy chart, on average he’ll live another 15 years, although of course there’s no guarantee. But that means a year for him is something like 6-7% of the time he’s got left. When he was 30 years old, it was about 2% of the years left to him on average. This adds to the sense of time running out, and the resultant sense of urgency and preciousness makes time seem to run more quickly.

Some people, of course, are impervious to all of this and never think about it. I’m not one of them.

Why it’s so hard to lose weight

The New Neo Posted on by

For many of us, that is.

There are those of you who are different. There are people who gain weight because they overindulge, and all they have to do is stop eating all that dessert or drinking all that beer or whatever it is they did to gain the weight, and off it drops.

And then there are those people regularly featured on cable TV who chow down to the tune of 20,000 calories a day and are enormously obese and get bariatric surgery because their systems are so awry that for reasons both psychological and physiological their appetites just won’t quit.

And then there are people like me, who’d like to lose ten or fifteen pounds and don’t eat all that much to begin with. It’s almost funny when I read an account from someone (usually a guy, but not always) who lost a formidable amount of weight by cutting out all the pizza and chips and candy bars and eating something like 1700 calories a day. I don’t eat pizza and chips and candy bars, and I doubt I eat 1700 calories on a regular basis when I’m not dieting.

And please do me a favor and don’t tell me to go paleo or Taubes or whatever. I’ve been on different versions of those sort of diets and (a) I don’t lose weight; and (b) I hate the food. And don’t tell me to exercise: I already do. Nearly every day I fast-walk three miles, and have done that for decades. And I can’t add lifting weights, although I’d like to, because doing so stirs up my chronic injuries.

Yesterday I found this Vox article entitled “The science is in: exercise won’t help you lose much weight.” I already knew that because upping my exercise has never caused weight loss for me—although reducing my exercise has never caused weight gain, either. I exercise for other reasons, but weight loss is not one of them.

That led me to another article that helps you figure out what your resting metabolism probably is, based on age and weight and gender: 1186 calories a day for me. Since resting metabolism is supposedly a certain fraction of your caloric needs, according to the site that means that I need somewhere in the range of about 1423 to 1700 calories a day. Let’s average that out and say it’s 1560 or so. That’s as much as I can eat every day without gaining weight, and that’s at a moderately high activity level. To lose weight, of course, I’d have to eat considerably less—but you can’t eat much less than that without being really, really, really hungry. In fact, I challenge you to eat about 1500 calories a day, day after day after day for the rest of your life, and not feel hungry.

It also means that if I were to go on a conventional restrictive diet of 1200 calories as I often do, I’d be losing at a snail’s pace (do snails lose weight?). And all it would take to stop my weight loss in its tracks (or slow it down considerably from its already geologic pace) would be a couple of extra pieces of fruit a day, or an extra serving of pasta (which I almost never eat anyway, although I like it). Dessert? Don’t make me laugh.

To top it all off I can’t stand artificial sweeteners, and some of them actually make me very ill.

Come to think of it, maybe I should be grateful I’m the weight I am and just go about my business. But I have reasons for wanting to lose weight that have little to do with vanity—although vanity is one of them—and have to do with various things like cholesterol that have crept up and up over the years.

By the way, I was never naturally thin, even when young and very active. I’m 5’4″, and when I was dancing I weighted about 105, but I was subsisting on about 1000 calories a day, and my natural weight was closer to 130 at the time.

But enough about me. What about you?