Not watching the 2019 Oscars; thinking of Malek and Mercury

The New Neo Posted on by

I just couldn’t bring myself to watch the Oscars this year, even for the fashions.

I’ve only seen one of the movies this year that was nominated, “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It was fun (despite the historical inaccuracy typical of the genre), and I loved the music. But a great movie? No. And a great performance by Rami Malek, who won Best Actor for it? No, no, a thousand times no. Malek tried his best, and pretty obviously worked like a dog. But no—he doesn’t conjure up Freddie Mercury at all, at least not for me.

Now, I seem to be in the minority about that. In fact, I’m nearly alone in holding such an opinion. The critics didn’t like the movie all that much, although the public did (as I said, it was fun, and the music a romp through Queen’s great hits). But almost all the critics loved Malek and praised him to the skies.

Now, I’m not holding myself out to be a big Mercury expert. But I’ve seen some performance videos and a number of interviews with him, and in the movie Malek just doesn’t convey Mercury to me, despite the prosthetic nose and the prosthetic teeth and the incredible effort I’m sure Malek put into it. Nor was it Malek who was singing, for the most part, although that’s to be expected.

The poor guy was especially hampered by fake teeth that were too big for his face. While it’s absolutely true that Mercury himself had prominently protruding teeth, he also had a much bigger head and face, more regal and longer and just larger than Malek, and his teeth didn’t look as prominent and just plain odd as similar teeth look on Malek. Mercury’s teeth never dominated his face, but Malek’s did, and Malek never seemed comfortable in them. That’s a terrible handicap to overcome as an actor.

There was a lot more that went wrong. Malek has pale blue eyes, very arresting and hypnotic in the movie but nothing, absolutely nothing, like Mercury’s. And I’m not speaking just of the color, but the general look of the eyes. Malek looked very intense and almost in a trance much of the time, almost demented or possessed, which is not a look I’ve ever seen on Mercury’s face in any of the videos.

But most of all Malek didn’t move like Mercury, and since a great deal of the film is concert performances in which Malek mimics Mercury’s performing style and movements almost obsessively, this rings false for me. I think for most people, though, this aspect was the part that was most impressive of all in Malek’s performance. I’m sure it took a lot of study and practice by Malek to raise his arm a certain way at a certain time, just like Mercury had, and to use the same gestures and steps in general. But the effect was very different, at least for me.

Mercury had an unusual and idiosyncratic way of moving and in particular of standing when he performed. Mercury’s moves didn’t look choreographed; it seemed as though he was just moving as the music and his spirit dictated. But with Malek, it seemed apparent to me that he was thinking of his next move all the time and nothing seemed spontaneous (of course, it wasn’t spontaneous for the actor—but it would have helped if he could have made it seem spontaneous).

Mercury’s hallmark stance, especially when singing ballads, was to open his arms widely and expansively, throw his head waaaay back and turn his face up, and open and expand his chest. He’d often plant his feet in a wide stance that was somewhat turned out, edging towards the balletic. The entire effect was to say with his body: Audience, world, I love you, I’m open to you, I’m yours and you’re mine.

Not an easy thing to accomplish, and Malek never came close to the feel of that body language. He didn’t have the balletic stance, the line, or the emotional openness.

In addition, whatever their relative heights (I believe Mercury was somewhat taller than Malek is), Mercury certainly looked taller and just plain larger on stage, and had a dominant upper body and longer leaner legs. The long legs were what made him look tall. Malek looks wiry and compact, whereas Mercury was stretched out. And Malek’s legs are shorter in proportion to his torso, which makes him look short or at least shorter than he actually is, and helps to make his movements seem contracted and much smaller than Mercury’s.

I suppose I sound nitpicky. But things like this really disturb me, and I’m very sensitive to posture and movement. Between the marbles in Malek’s mouth, his stoned “Village of the Damned” eyes, and his tense body, it was a very interesting performance. It certainly didn’t bore me. But he seemed just plain weird to me in a way that Mercury didn’t.

But I’d rather discuss Malek and Mercury than the intensely boring and self-congratulatory Oscars.

NOTE: Here’s a video that shows Mercury performing a slow song and displaying some of the body language I’m talking about.

Songs with big changups

The New Neo Posted on by

I saw the movie “Bohemian Rhapsody” recently—more about that in another post—which started me thinking about the phenomenon of rock songs that start one way and then go off in a very different direction. I don’t just mean a traditional bridge. I mean a change that’s much longer and more complex.

The song “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a classic of the genre. It’s long—as such songs tend to be—to make room for all the changes. It’s actually three songs in one: a mournful and tormented ballad by a killer, a kind of nonsense operetta-style middle, a more typical rock third part, and then a return to the first section for the finale. I assume you’re familiar with it, but if you’re not (or just to refresh your memory), here it is:

Off the top of my head I can only think of three more songs in that category, although I’m pretty certain there are more, perhaps even many more. Here’s my next one, “Layla.” It has only two parts, and I have to say that I only like the first part. The second part seems insipid to me, but the first is great. Your mileage may differ:

Then we have “Paranoid Android” by Radiohead. I like its first part well enough, although the whinyness of singer Thom Yorke’s voice gets to me after a while. The second part is dreadful to me, like fingernails on a blackboard. The third—or “rain down”—part is quite lovely and even at times moving, despite that whinyness again, and in the end we come back to what amounts to a reprise of something like the off-putting part two:

I had never looked that song up before, but when I did, I found that it was in part inspired by Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide books (minus their light and amusing tone, I’d say).

And the song’s third part of which I’m so fond? This is its genesis:

The harmonies form a looped chord progression resembling a Baroque passacaglia, with the tonality split between C minor and D minor. This section uses multi-tracked, choral vocal arrangement…

Hmmm, maybe it’s that Bach strain I’m responding to, without even realizing it.

Lastly we have “A Day In the Life” by the Beatles. I’m not at all sure it qualifies, though. It’s really just a first part that’s slow, a second part that’s different, and a third part that’s just the first part sung peppier, plus some complex transition sounds with ascending pitch:

Maybe you can suggest more of them.

Leftists and reality

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting question from commenter Geoffrey Britain:

What is the practical difference between an entrenched ‘confirmation bias’, that is immune to contrary fact, logic, reason and common sense…and ideological fanaticism?

How does a person who stops “all such meanderings from the Truth as the Party sees it and wills it” differ from an ideological fanatic?

I can’t help but conclude that the millions of AOCs are well beyond confirmation bias.

It may be a distinction that doesn’t matter all that much except in psychological terms, but the difference is whether the person is consciously lying or whether the person believes what he or she is saying.

Remember in Nineteen Eighty-Four, when O’Brien is torturing and brainwashing Winston, and he holds up his fingers and asks how many fingers, and Winston keeps saying what he sees? Here’s the passage I mean:

O’Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O’Brien turned away from the wall.

‘Ashes,’ he said. ‘Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed.’

‘But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it.’

‘I do not remember it,’ said O’Brien.

Winston’s heart sank. That was doublethink. He had a feeling of deadly helplessness. If he could have been certain that O’Brien was lying, it would not have seemed to matter. But it was perfectly possible that O’Brien had really forgotten the photograph. And if so, then already he would have forgotten his denial of remembering it, and forgotten the act of forgetting. How could one be sure that it was simple trickery? Perhaps that lunatic dislocation in the mind could really happen: that was the thought that defeated him…

…’Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence?’

Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not know whether ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was the answer that would save him from pain; he did not even know which answer he believed to be the true one….

‘But how can you stop people remembering things?’ cried Winston again momentarily forgetting the dial. ‘It is involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine!’

O’Brien’s manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial.

‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘you have not controlled it. That is what has brought you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.’

He paused for a few moments, as though to allow what he had been saying to sink in.

‘Do you remember,’ he went on, ‘writing in your diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four”?’

‘Yes,’ said Winston.

O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.

‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’

‘Four.’

‘And if the party says that it is not four but five — then how many?’

‘Four.’

The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over Winston’s body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop. O’Brien watched him, the four fingers still extended. He drew back the lever. This time the pain was only slightly eased.

‘How many fingers, Winston?’

‘Four.’

The needle went up to sixty.

‘How many fingers, Winston?’

‘Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!’

The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The heavy, stern face and the four fingers filled his vision. The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous, blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four.

‘How many fingers, Winston?’

‘Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!’

‘How many fingers, Winston?’

‘Five! Five! Five!’

‘No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four. How many fingers, please?’

‘Four! five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!’

Abruptly he was sitting up with O’Brien’s arm round his shoulders. He had perhaps lost consciousness for a few seconds. The bonds that had held his body down were loosened. He felt very cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth were chattering, the tears were rolling down his cheeks. For a moment he clung to O’Brien like a baby, curiously comforted by the heavy arm round his shoulders. He had the feeling that O’Brien was his protector, that the pain was something that came from outside, from some other source, and that it was O’Brien who would save him from it.

‘You are a slow learner, Winston,’ said O’Brien gently.

‘How can I help it?’ he blubbered. ‘How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.’

‘Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.’

I put up the whole long quote because the passage is so amazing. I first read it when I was about twelve years old, and it chilled me to the bone.

I discuss the phenomenon at greater length in this post. Here’s an excerpt from that:

To keep one’s eyes on the prize, whether that prize be…idealistic goals…or the simple drive for absolute power voiced by the fictional O’Brien when he tells Winston “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power”—it is necessary for the follower to filter out reality and to believe whatever is seen as bringing the world closer to the goal.

The mental gymnastics involved are described very well in another literary work, this time one of nonfiction, the autobiography of Communist-turned-government-informant Whittaker Chambers, entitled Witness [emphasis mine]:

When I first knew him, Harry Freeman [who later become the assistant US chief of Tass, the Soviet news service] was just out of Cornell University, where he had brilliantly majored in history…the best mind that I was to meet among the American Communist intellectuals. It was an entirely new type of mind to me. No matter how favorable his opinion had been to an individual or his political role, if that person fell from grace in the Communist Party, Harry Freeman changed his opinion about him instantly. That was not strange, that was a commonplace of Communist behavior. What was strange was that Harry seemed to change without any effort or embarrasment. There seemed to vanish from his mind any recollection that he had ever held any opinion other than the approved one. If you taxed him with his former views, he would show surprise, and that surprise would be authentic. He would then demonstrate to you, in a series of mental acrobatics so flexible that the shifts were all but untraceable, that he had never thought anything else.

O’Brien would be proud—now that’s the sort of mental flexibility that the Party needs and desires.

Of course, rationalization and denial of facts that don’t fit a person’s previously held beliefs is not just a province of the Left. It’s a general human trait, and that is why a mind is a difficult thing to change. But the Left carefully nurtures, fosters, advocates, and even requires this sort of denial, whereas it is my observation that the Right (and this was something that was formative in my own change experience), while hardly immune, is much less demanding that its adherents dismiss and deny logic and inconvenient facts.

Those gentleman Republicans

The New Neo Posted on by

Jeffrey Hart, who died recently, was a highly respected longtime conservative thinker and writer who had been a professor of English literature at Dartmouth for three decades. Scott Johnson, who studied under him there, wrote a tribute that clearly shows he had the highest respect for Professor Hart.

I didn’t know Hart, nor am I familiar with his writing, and I trust Scott Johnson’s judgment on the huge value of his life’s work and the inspiration he was as a teacher. But this obituary for Hart in the Times contains some statements Hart made in his later years that illustrate almost perfectly a phenomenon I was writing about recently: the person on the right who is a gentleman, looking for fellow gentlemen or gentlewomen. Here’s an excerpt from that comment of mine, in which I describe as “these people” this type of Republican and/or conservative and what he/she is looking for in a politician:

Bush senior was a patrician Yalie, very old school country club Republican, with impeccable credentials. He passed muster in that respect…[He was one of the] gentlemen and moderate Republicans who played by the rules…

Reagan was sui generis. But he was also a gentleman too—which Trump is not. That is one of the main reasons these people hate Trump—he’s not playing by the rules of the well-educated, classy gentleman (even though he actually is quite well-educated and grew up very rich).

That’s what I mean when I wrote about their wanting someone like Trump to demonstrate class and education by certain airs and signs. In other words, act like a gentleman.

These days, people who have this preference for gentlemen in politics usually hide it; I’ve never heard of someone openly admitting it. But Hart wasn’t hiding it at all in his quoted remarks, which occurred during the Bush II administration:

Professor Hart explained his personal politics in an interview with the cultural critic James Panero in 2006 in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine.

“My conservatism is aristocratic in spirit, anti-populist and rooted in the Northeast,” he said. “It is Burke brought up-to-date. A ‘social conservative’ in my view is not a moral authoritarian Evangelical who wants to push people around, but an American gentleman, conservative in a social sense. He has gone to a good school, maybe shops at J. Press, maybe plays tennis or golf, and drinks either Bombay or Beefeater martinis, or maybe Dewar’s on the rocks, or both.”

I’m thinking some of this may have been meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek, a reference to certain cliches about conservatives. Without knowing Hart at all, I really can’t say. But it also seems serious as well, and if so it would explain better than I could some of the spirit that animates the later hatred of Trump that comes from NeverTrumpers on the conservative side, particularly those who have long dwelled in the realms of acadame.

The Panero interview quotes an op-ed Hart wrote in 2005:

The Bush Presidency often is called conservative. This is a mistake. It is populist and radical, and its principal energies have roots in American history, and these roots are not conservative.

That’s one of the ways in which Hart justified his opposition to someone like George W. Bush: that Bush was not really conservative. And most conservatives would agree that Bush was not really a conservative, so that contention by Hart is not particularly puzzling. What is puzzling was the fact that Hart apparently voted for John Kerry in 2004 as a reaction—after all, if Bush wasn’t conservative, what on earth was John Kerry? Later Hart voted for Obama, twice—a bit puzzling because I would think that in many ways he would have been attracted to gentleman Romney, except for the fact that Romney is a Mormon, which may in Hart’s eyes have been something like being an evangelical.

Here’s the larger context of one of the Hart quotes I mentioned earlier:

Like the Whig gentry who were the Founders, I loathe populism,” Hart explains. “Most especially in the form of populist religion, i.e., the current pestiferous bible-banging evangelicals, whom I regard as organized ignorance, a menace to public health, to science, to medicine, to serious Western religion, to intellect and indeed to sanity. Evangelicalism, driven by emotion, and not creedal, is thoroughly erratic and by its nature cannot be conservative. My conservatism is aristocratic in spirit, anti-populist and rooted in the Northeast. It is Burke brought up to date. A ‘social conservative’ in my view is not a moral authoritarian Evangelical who wants to push people around, but an American gentleman, conservative in a social sense. He has gone to a good school, maybe shops at J. Press, maybe plays tennis or golf, and drinks either Bombay or Beefeater martinis, or maybe Dewar’s on the rocks, or both.”

A decade later Hart was, unfortunately, suffering from the dementia which ended up causing his death. So he never had a chance to express his opinion of Donald Trump. One can only imagine what it would have been, but my guess is that he would probably have been a firm member of the NeverTrumpers.

Victor Davis Hanson in The New Yorker: Trump as tragic hero

The New Neo Posted on by

Victor Davis Hanson has given a fascinating interview to Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker.

The interview is well worth reading if only for the thesis that Hanson, a classics professor, offers about Trump:

Do you feel that in some ways he is a hero out of Greek myth?

Yeah, as long as we understand the word “hero.” Americans don’t know what that word means. They think it means you live happily ever after or you are selfless. Whether it is Achilles or Sophocles’s Ajax or Antigone, they can act out of insecurity, they can act out of impatience—they can act out of all sorts of motives that are less than what we say in America are heroic. But the point that they are making is, I see a skill that I have. I see a problem. I want to solve that problem, and I want to solve that problem so much that the ensuing reaction to that solution may not necessarily be good for me. And they accept that.

It reminds me of Trump saying that people will get sick of winning. It seems like you are saying we have gotten sick of it, and that is the tragedy of Trump.

I think so. I tried to use as many examples as I could of the classic Western, whether it was “Shane” or “High Noon” or “The Magnificent Seven.” They all are the same—the community doesn’t have the skills or doesn’t have the willpower or doesn’t want to stoop to the corrective method to solve the existential problem, whether it is cattle barons or banditos. So they bring in an outsider, and immediately they start to be uneasy because he is uncouth—his skills, his attitude—and then he solves the problem, and they declare to him, whether it is Gary Cooper in “High Noon” or Alan Ladd in “Shane,” “I think it’s better you leave. We don’t need you anymore. We feel dirty that we ever had to call you in.” I think that is what is awaiting Trump…

How does this fit, in a Greek sense, with the man we are often confronted with—constantly tweeting, spending much of his day watching cable news, obsessed with small slights. Do these things, allowing for the modern context, also remind you of great heroes of myth?

Have you read Sophocles’s “Ajax” ever? It’s one of his best plays.

No, I haven’t.

You have a neurotic hero who cannot get over the fact that he was by all standards the successor to Achilles and deserves Achilles’s armor, and yet he was outsmarted by this wily, lesser Odysseus, who rigged the contest and got the armor. All he does is say, “This wasn’t fair. I’m better. Doesn’t anybody know this?” It’s true, but you want to say to Ajax, “Shut up and just take it.” Achilles has elements of a tragic hero. He says, at the beginning of the Iliad, “I do all the work. I kill all the Trojans. But when it comes to assigning booty, you always give it to mediocrities—deep-state, administrative nothings.” So he stalks off. And the gods tell him, “If you come back in, you will win fame, but you are going to end up dead.” So he makes a tragic, heroic decision that he is going to do that.

I think Trump really did think that there were certain problems and he had particular skills that he could solve. Maybe in a naïve fashion. But I think he understood, for all the emoluments-clause hysteria, that he wasn’t going to make a lot of money from it or be liked for it.

The article is interesting for what it presents of Hanson’s thoughts on the matter. But it’s also interesting because of the subtext, which is a cat-and-mouse game the interviewer believes he’s playing with Hanson. In the latter game, I’m not sure who wins, but I am pretty sure it depends on the bias of who is reading.

When I read the article, Chotiner’s lead-in descriptions of Hanson leapt out at me as being a debunking of the opinions of the man he is set to interview (supposedly respectfully). He can’t do away with Hanson’s obvious academic achievements and honors, but he distorts Hanson’s record outside of academia in a way that is meant to discredit Hanson in the reader’s mind before even reading any of Hanson’s words in the interview. One small example:

…[Hanson] has a history of hostility to undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants, who he claims are undermining American culture, and to African-Americans who speak about the persistence of racism…

Speaking of “hostility,” that’s a hostile summary description of Hanson’s work that’s patently unfair to Hanson, and yet meant to label him as a bigot at the outset. That Hanson’s responses to the interview are so thoughtful and interesting merely makes it even more important that Chotiner set it up in the readers’ minds in a way that the reader knows that he or she is not supposed to seriously pay attention to the actual thoughts of this bigoted person.

Chotiner also frames his questions in a way that makes his own bias known, although rather subtly. Hanson is much smarter than Chotiner (not to mention far more well-versed in the classics), but Chotiner is better at the spin and the propaganda.

Is it “The Greatest Constitutional Crisis Since the Civil War”?

The New Neo Posted on by

Conrad Black has an article in American Greatness with the title “The Greatest Constitutional Crisis Since the Civil War.” Here’s an excerpt:

The most immense and dangerous public scandal in American history is finally cracking open like a ripe pomegranate. The broad swath of the Trump-hating media that has participated in what has amounted to an unconstitutional attempt to overthrow the government are reduced to reporting the events and revelations of the scandal in which they have been complicit, in a po-faced ho-hum manner to impart to the misinformed public that this is as routine as stock market fluctuations or the burning of an American flag in Tehran.

For more than two years, the United States and the world have had two competing narratives: that an elected president of the United States was a Russian agent whom the Kremlin helped elect; and its rival narrative that senior officials of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and other national intelligence organizations had repeatedly lied under oath, misinformed federal officials, and meddled in partisan political matters illegally and unconstitutionally and had effectively tried to influence the outcome of a presidential election, and then undo its result by falsely propagating the first narrative. It is now obvious and indisputable that the second narrative is the correct one.

The authors, accomplices, and dupes of this attempted overthrow of constitutional government are now well along in reciting their misconduct without embarrassment or remorse because—in fired FBI Director James Comey’s formulation—a “higher duty” than the oath they swore to uphold the Constitution compelled them. Or—in fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s words—“the threat” was too great. Nevermind that the nature of “the threat” was that the people might elect someone he and Comey disapproved of as president, and that that person might actually serve his term, as elected.

The article goes on to describe some of the details of what happened, and the players involved. It’s worth reading the whole thing for a refresher course in what you probably already know.

But despite the fact that I agree that this is a constitutional scandal of extremely major proportions, I disagree with Black’s conclusions when he writes:

The collapse of this grotesque putsch, under the irresistible pressure of a functioning attorney general and Senate committees that are not hamstrung by NeverTrumpers, will cause a revulsion against the Democratic Party that will be seismic and prolonged.

I think he very gravely underestimates the power of belief, propaganda, and confirmation bias. I think the number of people who will have minds changed by this is very small. I could be wrong, but that’s what I see so far.

The media pushed its own narrative for two years, and I believe that has had a tremendous effect. The left, of course, was ready to believe it, and for the hard left truth doesn’t matter, only the ends that justify the means. For the people who are more in the middle, the relentless daily drip drip drip has its effect. Minds and opinions become hardened in a certain belief system, and not too many people are willing to change those opinions even in the face of strong evidence that the opinions are wrong, even very wrong.

The MSM knows this. They know their power. And their power exists even though a lot of people don’t trust them these days. It’s paradoxical, but the hammering home of a story—even from somewhat suspect sources—has the effect of habituating people to that story and making it seem more plausible. The sheer weight and number of the stories, even if each one is suspect and/or is later shown to have been shaky or even incorrect, still has a cumulative effect for many people.

This story has been complex, with many twistings and turnings and details. It takes extraordinary interest and patience and attention to read the whole thing, put the pieces together, and sort it out for oneself objectively. Realistically speaking, what percentage of people is going to do that? I believe that most people will just accept the narrative presented by the media outlets of their choice.

Genetic modification and the law of unintended consequences

The New Neo Posted on by

I read two articles today that dovetailed with each other, although one concerns humans and the other mosquitoes. Then again, haven’t humans and mosquitoes long been intertwined?

Here’s the first:

The twins, called Lulu and Nana, reportedly had their genes modified before birth by a Chinese scientific team using the new editing tool CRISPR. The goal was to make the girls immune to infection by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Now, new research shows that the same alteration introduced into the girls’ DNA, deletion of a gene called CCR5, not only makes mice smarter but also improves human brain recovery after stroke, and could be linked to greater success in school.

“The answer is likely yes, it did affect their brains,” says Alcino J. Silva, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose lab uncovered a major new role for the CCR5 gene in memory and the brain’s ability to form new connections.

The article is a bit cryptic about why this was done. But it highlights the fact that, particularly in countries with fewer rules about the ethics of scientific research and practice, these sorts of rogue experiments will increasingly be done. And it is nearly impossible to predict their ultimate results, except to say that science fiction scenarios easily come to mind.

Or literature. How much will these girls’ memories be enhanced, if the report is true? (It seems that one always needs to add “if the report is true” these days.) Since I often think in terms of literary references (is there a gene for that?), the story in the article make me think of a fictional story: “Funes the Memorious.” For Funes, enhanced memory was not necessarily a great thing, although he seemed to enjoy it. From the story by Borges:

Funes…reveals that, since his fall from the horse, he perceives everything in full detail and remembers it all. He remembers, for example, the shape of clouds at all given moments, as well as the associated perceptions (muscular, thermal, etc.) of each moment. Funes has an immediate intuition of the mane of a horse or the form of a constantly changing flame that is comparable to our (normal people’s) intuition of a simple geometric shape such as a triangle or square.

In order to pass the time, Funes has engaged in projects such as reconstructing a full day’s worth of past memories (an effort which, he finds, takes him another full day), and constructing a “system of enumeration” that gives each number a different, arbitrary name. Borges correctly points out to him that this is precisely the opposite of a system of enumeration, but Funes is incapable of such understanding.

I wrote that “Funes is an extreme example of memory run amok to the point of being dysfunctional.” What will happen to Lulu and Nana? I’m not saying they will turn into Funes, of course. But still, the effects are unpredictable and not necessarily as anticipated, and certainly not part of the original plan, which had to do with HIV resistance.

Which brings us to article number two. This one is about genetically modified mosquitoes:

Scientists have launched a major new phase in the testing of a controversial genetically modified organism: a mosquito designed to quickly spread a genetic mutation lethal to its own species, NPR has learned.

For the first time, researchers have begun large-scale releases of the engineered insects, into a high-security laboratory in Terni, Italy.

“This will really be a breakthrough experiment,” says Ruth Mueller, an entomologist who runs the lab. “It’s a historic moment.”

The goal is to see if the mosquitoes could eventually provide a powerful new weapon to help eradicate malaria in Africa, where most cases occur.

Malaria is still a big killer in Africa, although it could be fought with DDT. But DDT is no longer commonly used because of environmental concerns; I wrote about the problems here, as well as the fact that those concerns seem overblown.

Seems to me that this mosquito engineering has much larger potential adverse consequences than DDT. If I had to choose between the two methods of dealing with malaria, at the moment I’d say I prefer DDT:

The lab was specially built to evaluate the modified insects in as close to a natural environment as possible without the risk of releasing them into the wild, about which there are deep concerns regarding unforeseen effects on the environment.

“This is an experimental technology which could have devastating impacts,” says Dana Perls of Friends of the Earth, an environmental group that’s part of an international coalition fighting this new generation of modified organisms.

To prevent any unforeseen effects on the environment, scientists have always tried to keep genetically engineered organisms from spreading their mutations.

But in this case, researchers want the modification to spread. So they engineered mosquitoes with a “gene drive.”…

But critics fear that gene-drive organisms could run amok and wreak havoc if they were ever released into the wild. The insects could inadvertently have a negative effect on crops, for example, by eliminating important pollinators, they fear. The insects’ population crash could also lead to other mosquitoes coming with other diseases, critics say…

“This is a technology where we don’t know where it’s going to end. We need to stop this right where it is,” says Nnimmo Bassey, director of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation in Nigeria. “They’re trying to use Africa as a big laboratory to test risky technologies.”

The experiment is a key step in the Target Malaria project. The project’s major funder is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation…

That last bit doesn’t surprise me one iota. I wrote about Gates in that post of mine I linked earlier, and added that it was ironic that Gates wasn’t also championing the use of DDT now. It could save enormous numbers of lives. It’s ironic, but it doesn’t surprise me.

White nationalist arrested on weapons charges

The New Neo Posted on by

Lt. Christopher Paul Hasson was arrested last Friday:

A Coast Guard lieutenant and self-proclaimed white nationalist was arrested on charges of illegal drug and weapons possession on Friday. But authorities say the charges are just the “proverbial tip of the iceberg” and that the man is a “domestic terrorist, bent on committing acts dangerous to human life.”

This guy wrote some scary stuff, privately and published only to himself: many threats to liberal and leftist public figures, much white supremacist talk. He also wrote that he was “dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on the earth.” He thought maybe a plague of some sort might do the trick. Here’s the sort of thing he had in drafts on his computer:

I think a plague would be most successful but how do I acquire the needed/ Spanish flu, botulism, anthrax not sure yet but will find something.

Interesting idea the other day. Start with biological attacks followed by attack on food supply. . . Have to research this. Two pronged attack seems it might be more successful. Institute a bombing/sniper campaign.

I have little doubt that there are currently people in the US like Hasson, plotting mass terror. I have little doubt that some are on the left and some on the right. How do we find them? How can we tell who is going to actually commit an act of terror and who is just “dreaming” about it, writing notes on a computer? On what grounds do they get detained, and when?

In fact, that’s true of contemplating or planning any crime. Is writing on your computer, amassing some weapons (not anthax, but ordinary weapons) in accordance with gun laws, actionable? I don’t think so.

Fortunately for us, Hasson seems to have violated some gun and drug laws and could be arrested on those grounds, so we don’t have to get into the question of how serious he was about his terrorist attack plans. But what if he hadn’t violated (or allegedly violated) any such laws? What if the only crime of which he’d been guilty was thoughtcrime?

If Hasson had conspired with someone, and that person had gone to authorities, they might be able to charge Hasson with conspiracy (see this):

Conspiracy has been defined in the United States as an agreement of two or more people to commit a crime, or to accomplish a legal end through illegal actions…

Conspiracy law usually does not require proof of specific intent by the defendants to injure any specific person to establish an illegal agreement. Instead, usually the law requires only that the conspirators have agreed to engage in a certain illegal act.

Under most U.S. laws, for a person to be convicted of conspiracy, not only must he or she agree to commit a crime, but at least one of the conspirators must commit an overt act (the actus reus) in furtherance of the crime.

But I don’t think any of this applies to Hasson. I haven’t seen any allegations of conspiracy.

You can find the motion for detention pending trial here (scroll down). He’s being charged with the following:

…possession of a firearm and ammunition by an unlawful user or addict of controlled substances) and simple possession of Tramadol, which is an opioid and a Schedule IV controlled substance.

The rest of the document is a listing of the reasons he should be detained pending trial, and consists of a description of his extremist views, dreams, plans, writings, and computer research, none of which he seems to have shared with anyone (he wrote a draft of an email that he sent to himself, for example). The contents are indeed violent and very ominous—as well as containing frequent references to the attack perpetrated by Breivik and the detailed plans Breivik had made. Around the time Hasson was writing all of this he was buying multiple weapons; more recently he was listing possible liberal targets and researching where they lived and that sort of thing. Altogether a chilling picture.

But—at least so far as I can see at the moment—he doesn’t appear to have committed any act of terrorism, or even threatened anyone except in his own writings to himself. It’s almost as though this was some sort of textbook law exam case, as I remember them—designed to describe a set of circumstances that places someone in a difficult gray area and asks the student what should be done and why.

I think it was wise to get this guy for the acts he’s actually committed, which is exactly what authorities have done so far in this case. I’m having some difficulty finding the possible penalties he could face if he’s convicted of the firearms and drug offenses, so I’m not sure whether even Hasson’s conviction on these charges would put him away for a significant amount of time.

But that doesn’t solve the question of what to do with anyone—left, right, or in-between—who has made detailed and obsessive plans for murdering people (few or many) and yet hasn’t done anything in terms of acts, except the possession of lawful weapons. I suppose the commitment laws could come into play if the person is judged to be suffering from a mental illness, but that tends to be quite ineffective and time-limited, as well as difficult to implement.

It all comes down to an old question: how much risk are we willing to accept in order to retain our liberty? We don’t want to be prosecuting thoughtcrime—at least, most of us on the right don’t.

Justice for Jussie

The New Neo Posted on by

When it finally came it was a move that should surprise no one who’s been following the news at all:

“Empire” actor Jussie Smollett faces a felony charge of disorderly conduct for allegedly filing a false report claiming two men attacked him last month, a Chicago Police Department spokesman tweeted Wednesday night.

Smollett has turned himself in:

Yesterday I speculated on Smollet’s motive:

Attention and fame—fifteen minutes or longer—are potent [motives]. And of course, there’s also the desire to stir up political conflict over race to the detriment of the right.

I then went on to speculate at length in that post on a third possible motive, both for Smollett and for others engaged in similar hoaxes: the desire to be part of a noble group cause, such as the causes of the past in the fight against overt and violent bigotry against black people. I added:

I am not offering this post as any sort of excuse whatsoever. It is merely a description of a phenomenon. In the case of at least some race hoaxers, I really think this is part of the driving force to commit a dangerous and truly heinous crime that could have grave consequences, including riots and more hatred. I utterly condemn all race hoaxers and believe they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but that doesn’t keep me from being interested in what might make them tick.

The police say that Smollett faked the attack because he was “dissatisfied” with his salary. That is no surprise either; probably he thought that he would become more famous, more sympathetic, more virtuous, and more heroic all at the same time as a result of his hoax. These things—the desire for money and the desire for appearing virtuous despite being exactly the opposite, as well as the desire to be part of a noble cause even if your actions are ignoble—can all co-exist.

Or perhaps I’m wrong and Smollet was merely motivated by money. That is certainly possible; I’ve been wrong about things before.

But whatever his motives, it certainly was a funny way to go about it, and I don’t mean funny ha-ha. As I said, I hope he’s prosecuted to the full extent of the law. This could have ended up much much worse if he and the brothers hadn’t been so incompetent as hoaxers. What if they had succeeded? It could have done immense harm to blacks and whites and everyone in-between.

And if the MSM and many politicians and celebrities on the left hadn’t immediately jumped to believe Smollett, the hoax wouldn’t have done them any harm, either. As it is, it should be doing their reputations harm. As it is, though, they’ll probably ignore their own shame and hope it will go away.

And it probably will go away, too, at least in the eyes of their supporters. Memories are short, and human beings can rationalize away quite a lot. But perhaps next time a few more people, just a few, won’t be so quick in the rush to judgment.

Race hoaxes, virtue-signaling, and the desire for the heroic

The New Neo Posted on by

In all the verbiage about Justin Smollet and other race hoaxers, there’s been talk of motive. Attention and fame—fifteen minutes or longer—are potent ones. And of course, there’s also the desire to stir up political conflict over race to the detriment of the right.

But I think for most people another very strong motivator is a more complex one. People usually want their lives to have meaning, and one way to gain meaning is to engage in a great and heroic struggle against enormous and evil forces. Sometimes that struggle is against hatred, and in that fight a person often suffers at the hands of the haters.

There is no question that a battle of this type is part of the history of black people in America. And there are quite a few heroes in that struggle who are much celebrated today.

What can a young person do if he or she wants some of the same intensity of purpose? The person doesn’t even have to be all that young, either; he or she can be someone old and nostalgic for more heroic days (although I don’t think that’s anywhere near as common as the phenomenon in the young, especially if the older person is old enough to remember how bad it really was then compared to now).

So how does one become a hero? Of course, there are plenty of bona fide ways that have nothing to do with race. But not everyone sees him or herself in those roles. Some people want the glory without the work, and they don’t mind lying in order to get it. They tell themselves that the lie is justified because of their heroic and virtuous cause.

It’s not just race hoaxers, either who exhibit this phenomenon. It’s also The Resistance, whose members fancy themselves fashioned after the Resistance in WWII. This current Resistance is ridiculous in that conceit, but I think their attempt involves a yearning for the heroic. It also involves much else, of course, including a hefty dose of virtue-signaling narcissism as well as a shallow knowledge of history. But a desire to be involved in a group that’s dedicated to a great cause is part of it.

Let us not forget that “group” aspect. People are lonelier today than when I was young, despite (or maybe in part because of) the internet and social media and all that connectedness we supposedly have. Connected to whom? Connected for what? Connected how? Virtue-signaling—saying we are connected to a group with “good intentions”—is one possible answer to that lacuna.

You may think I’m being much too kind to race hoaxers in giving them any hint of good intentions. Perhaps I am. But I don’t think so. And I am not offering this post as any sort of excuse whatsoever. It is merely a description of a phenomenon. In the case of at least some race hoaxers, I really think this is part of the driving force to commit a dangerous and truly heinous crime that could have grave consequences, including riots and more hatred. I utterly condemn all race hoaxers and believe they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but that doesn’t keep me from being interested in what might make them tick.