Being a spy is risky

The New Neo Posted on by

It was clear from the start that the recent severe and sudden illnesses of UK-dwelling former anti-Russian spy Sergei Skirpal and his visiting daughter Yulia Skripal were most likely the result of poisoning. Skirpal had been “convicted of passing the identities of Russian intelligence agents working undercover in Europe to the UK.”

Now it’s been announced that, “Scientists at the UK’s military research facility at Porton Down have been examining a substance thought to be behind their collapse.” A policeman who came to their aid is also seriously ill, and previously Skripal’s 43-year-old son died under mysterious circumstances.

Russia has a history of this sort of thing, including possibly helping the Bulgarians with this dramatic murder (an event that also occurred in the UK, in London to be precise).

But although it’s virtually certain that the Skripals were poisoned, and probably by some nerve agent, it’s not quite as crystal clear that the Russians did it, although there’s no doubt they would be capable of it. In Skripal’s case, however, someone else may be trying to kill him, and perhaps make us think the Russians did it. Here’s why:

The possibility of an unexplained substance being involved has drawn comparisons with the 2006 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko – a public inquiry concluded the killing of the Russian dissident was probably carried out with the approval of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.

Former MI5 officer Annie Machon pointed out that the two cases were very different, however.

Mr Litvinenko was a whistleblower, dissident and consultant for MI6 actively at the time of his death, she said, whereas Mr Skripal has already been caught, convicted and pardoned [by Russia] and allowed to freely find safe haven in the UK.

“There’s no conceivable reason that I can see that the Russian state would have been targeting him at the moment,” she told BBC’s Breakfast. “That’s why we need to think about what else he might have been involved in.”

Maybe, however, the idea for the Russians is to just send the message, “If you turn on us, neither you nor your family will ever be safe, even after we pardon you.”

Why selfies are distorted, especially noses

The New Neo Posted on by

This is one of the more depressing—albeit minor—pieces of news I’ve read in a long time:

Last year, more than half of plastic surgeons were approached by patients who wanted to look better in selfies, according to a survey by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

Talk about technology taking over! I’m not sure whether those requesting a nose fix actually realize that selfies are not reality but nevertheless consider selfies more important than reality, or whether they believe that the way they look in selfies constitutes the reality of how they look.

At any rate, here’s the explanation for the big-nose-in-selfies phenomenon:

Most smartphone cameras have wide-angle lenses, says The Verge’s creative director James Bareham, and close-ups with wide-angle lenses cause distortion that makes objects closer to the camera ”” like, say, a nose ”” look larger. “It’s kind of one of the basics of photography: don’t shoot portraits on a wide-angle lens because you will look terrible,” Bareham says.

That’s what selfie sticks are for (or long arms, if you happen to have them), although I’ve noticed that selfie sticks don’t totally correct the problem.

Or maybe my nose has grown larger with age:

But cartilage – that’s the plastic-like stuff in ears and noses – cartilage continues to grow until the day you die. Not only does cartilage grow, but the earlobes elongate from gravity. And that makes ears look even larger.

So it’s really true. Older people do have larger noses and ears.

Fortunately, my nose didn’t start out all that large, and my ears and earlobes are still positively minuscule.

The liberal fantasy of what the thoughts of a Trump voter might be…

The New Neo Posted on by

…drives a lot of the Trump-hatred.

Actually, the liberal fantasy of what’s in the mind of conservatives and/or Republicans drives a lot of the hatred for conservatives and Republicans. Most liberals don’t just engage in strategic name-calling, either, when they call Republicans racists or religious nuts. For the most part the liberals I know seem to have a deeply held belief that they know these things about Republicans and are absolutely correct about them, and everything that occurs politically is interpreted in the light of that supposed knowledge.

You remember how every criticism of Obama was met with the liberal left cry, “You’re a racist!” One could look at that as strategic—that the person making the accusation didn’t really think it, and that of course that person realized that there could be valid criticism of a black president that had nothing to do with racism. And I suppose for some people it was strategic, a way to avoid dealing with the content of the criticism of Obama itself.

But with many of the people crying racism, I believe it worked the other way around. That is, conservatives and Republicans were by definition racists, and so because racism was their basic motivation then it made perfect sense to accuse them of being motivated by racism in criticizing President Obama—that most wonderful of presidents doing the most wonderful things.

Childhood is the kingdom: Millay reading Millay

The New Neo Posted on by

I find that lately I’ve been pulling back ever-so-slightly from day-to-day politics.

It’s not that I’m not writing about that sort of thing; I definitely still am. I just find that, for the most part, the stories du jour are about trivia and/or rumor and/or propaganda, as well as being repetitive, and I tend to want to ignore them. Trump White House in chaos! So and so will be fired! The stock market gets afraid of some piece of news and drops precipitously, and then settles down and rises again, often within a day or two of the plummeting.

I find myself being more and more drawn to the bigger questions. Not that I’ve ever ignored those, either, but it seems to me that the foundations of the entire enterprise are far more interesting and obviously important than what seems to dominate the news.

That’s where someone like Jordan Peterson comes in, and I think it’s why so many people—even young people—are interested in him. It’s not for nothing that his first book was called Maps of Meaning, because he’s interested in what Viktor Frankl called Man’s Search for Meaning, which Frankl considered the deepest motivator in human life.

That’s also where the arts fit in. The arts can be light and entertaining, but art can also call forth some very heavy emotions and thoughts and express them in ways that transcend the pedestrian, reaching parts of the human psyche and spirit that mere prose doesn’t touch.

All of that is an introduction to this video, which happened to strike me that way. It’s the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, who had a very indiosyncratic—and to our way of thinking, mannered—voice, reading a poem of hers called “Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies” (the link will take you to the text, which is on the right of the linked site). Millay specialized in very dramatic readings in a style no longer the least bit popular, and a lot of people seem to think her reading takes away from the poem. Millay usually specialized in rhyming poems and beautifully-crafted sonnets, but this free verse poem is pulled from some other part of her.

I wrote about Millay’s voice here, which was described by contemporary listeners as powerful and arresting. Millay was a petite woman, but this is not a petite voice:

Reason meets anti-reason through reason

The New Neo Posted on by

This comment from “The Other Chuck” was so good I decided to highlight it [emphasis mine]:

[Postmodernism is] the destruction of human reason, using reason, and the destruction of everything flowing from reason. If this sounds like nihilism, yes, but there is a purpose. That purpose is the acceptance of chaos as the only reality, an ever changing reality that allows for the whim of the moment to rule…In this kind of ever changing world there are no absolutes except the absolute of chaos. Politically the target is the Enlightenment, but that is not the main purpose IMO.

I highlighted that first sentence because I see at as the heart of the matter.

I’m not at all sure that I agree with Other Chuck’s later conclusion, however, which is that the main purpose is chaos rather than politics per se. I think both are very very important, but that the chaos—which the postmodernists do find very satisfying—is a route to political power. The two go hand in hand.

Destroying ideas via postmodernism is fun, and it also makes the destroyer powerful in the world of ideas which is, after all, the main world in which a philosopher operates. But it also is fun to see the despised traditionalists be dethroned, and to see the admired leftists take their places.

The Enlightenment emphasized both reason and individualism. It struck at those who had held power through superstition, manipulation, subjugation, and the subordination of the individual to the group. It’s no exaggeration to say that the Enlightenment is the foundation of the bulk of the Western cultural, societal, and scientific achievements of the last few centuries, and because some of the cultural elites in the west have decided those achievements are bad ones (even though they themselves are the beneficiaries of them) they would dearly love to tear them down.

The enemy of the Enlightenment has always been different forms of Romanticism. But the post-modernists are not really among the Romantics. That’s why, as The Other Chuck writes, the postmodernists use reason to perform the task of undermining the Enlightenment and its devotion to reason.

Italy joins the populist anti-EU wave

The New Neo Posted on by

Italy just had an election:

Italy was plunged into political uncertainty Monday after parliamentary elections delivered victories for populist, euroskeptic parties but left no clear path forward for a new government.

No party or coalition received enough votes to rule alone, and Italy now faces a hung parliament, in what European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker described last month as the “worst-case scenario” for Europe.

With nearly all votes counted Monday night, 50% of voters showed support for populist or right-wing parties. The anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) become the largest single party in parliament with roughly 32.7% of the vote, according to Italy’s Interior Ministry, although it will not have enough seats for an outright majority.

A right-wing coalition of parties won the most seats of any bloc in parliament with about 37% of the vote. The big winner in that group was the anti-immigrant and xenophobic League — formerly the Northern League — which garnered more votes than the center-right Forza Italia, its potential coalition partner.

European parliamentary politics often involve the need to form coalition governments, because with so many parties it can be hard for a single one to get a majority. And European definitions of “left” and “right” and “populist” are not necessarily the same as ours.

If you want to read about the Five Star Movement, see this. A quick perusal (very quick) indicates a mish-mosh of views most of which would not be considered conservative in this country, except for the anti-EU position. A party that also won a lot of votes in Italy, the League, is described just about everywhere as “far right,” but I have yet to see anything really explaining what the League stands for except that it is “anti-immigrant” (whatever that means in Europe these days) and anti-EU.

All in all, the results of this election can certainly be seen as an anti-EU vote:

The partial results showed that the two parties with the most euroskeptic platforms — the 5-Stars and the League — together topped the 50 percent needed to rule Italy. While the two are rivals, that scenario has been seen as the key barometer to watch to gauge Italy’s relations with Brussels, and a “nightmare scenario” for the European Union and markets if they were to form an unlikely alliance.

Claudio Borghi of the League told Sky that the election results send a clear message to Brussels.

“I think the will of the Italian people is very clear. The forces in favor of what Europe has done have been redimensioned,” Borghi told Sky TG24. “It’s a very strong message.”

It’s not surprising, given the elitism of the EU. That’s a common theme we keep seeing in country after European country.

Jordan Peterson on postmodernism

The New Neo Posted on by

Pass it around:

Does he even take a breath?

On Marxism’s appeal:

Last summer I wrote a post on that latter subject. Here it is:

When I first saw this tweet, I thought it very clever:

Difference between Nazi and Communist is when you say how horrible Nazis have been, they don’t say “Well, real Nazism has never been tried.”

It brought forth a wry smile from me.

But then I started thinking about the distinction. Because of course, both have been tried, and in fact the trial of Communism was a whole lot longer in terms of time. And in terms of suffering and death, although the geographic distribution and victims was somewhat different, the Soviets probably won that sweepstakes from the Nazis in terms of sheer numbers killed.

So, why the difference in attitudes of people these days towards each system? Communism is a theory with a philosophy that is more likely to appeal to naive but well-meaning people who just want everyone to get along, no one to be poor, and for us to be just one big happy family with no one so much richer or poorer than anyone else. The clearly demonstrated fact that this particular vision works very poorly in real life, and that its leaders tend to be of a very different mindset, is the source of both its appeal and the claim that the ideas are good but it’s just that somehow the wrong leaders got control of the ship.

Some of the original Nazis may have considered themselves to be do-gooders in the sense that they would do good for Germany and rid the world of people they considered problematic. But that’s not exactly a vision that appeals world-round. No, on its face (and deep down as well), Nazism sounds pretty repellent, or perhaps very repellent, to the majority of people. Even its vision seems dystopian rather than utopian, and instead of appealing to the “can’t we all just get together” aspirations of people, it appeals to their “I’ll smash you and I’ll come out on top” desires.

So although Nazism still has its adherents, they are a more isolated and less numerous group. And yet, I bet somewhere, somewhere, there’s a neo-Nazi who says that the problem with German Nazism was that Hitler went too far, too fast, or some such thing, and that if a more attractive and patient leader took charge Nazism would rise again.

Luck and success

The New Neo Posted on by

Well of course luck has something to do with success. But the basics must be there in terms of brains, drive, and ability, or it won’t work out in the long run even with some luck.

I don’t think much of simulations of the type described in the article, either.

It’s my observation that most people get on track fairly early (generally before 40 or even earlier) or they don’t. For example, the Depression was a cautionary tale my parents often told me, involving several friends of theirs (people I knew) whose luck—in terms of career “success,” that is—ran out when they were very young. For example, there was the guy who wanted more than anything to be a gym teacher but had to drop out of high school and felt himself lucky to find a job, any job. He ended up pushing racks in the garment district for a long long time and never made much money at all, although his son became—a gym teacher. It’s pretty obvious that if you get a degree of some sort and are trying to get work when there’s a recession going on rather than a boom, it will affect you, and people who might have smooth sailing otherwise will have a tougher time under those conditions. There are plenty of other things that matter, including how big the cohort is against which you’re competing, how you look, or what is the favored gender and race du jour.

Speaking of gender, I also noticed this today, about the choices women make in the work world. An excerpt from the interview (quotes are from psychologist Susan Pinker—who, by the way, turns out to be psychologist Steven Pinker’s sister):

I can’t predict the future, but several excellent recent studies show that, paradoxically, as a society becomes more egalitarian, the gender gap in occupational choice becomes wider, not narrower. A case in point: A study published last month in Psychological Science, by the psychologists David Geary and Gijsbert Stoet, looked at the academic performance of nearly half a million adolescents from 67 countries. What they found was that the more gender equal a country was, as determined by the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, the fewer women ultimately took up STEM paths in college. Countries with the most robust legal and cultural protections for gender equality””along with the strongest social safety nets””such as Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, and Finland, have the fewest female STEM graduates, weighing in at about 20 percent of the total (the U.S. has 24 percent). In contrast, countries with almost no protections, with few guarantees for women and where life satisfaction is low””such as Algeria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Albania””had by far the highest representation of women in STEM, approaching the researchers’ estimates of 41 percent, based on how well girls do in math and science in high school, without considering their other skills. Another study showing this paradoxical effect, from 2008, was led by David Schmitt. He and his colleagues found that gender differences in personality are way larger in cultures that offer more egalitarian gender roles and opportunities. This is not what one would predict if men’s and women’s preferences were exclusively constrained by cultural forces…

In places where girls and women feel they have the freedom to make their own choices, in other words, they are more likely to act on their personal strengths and interests. But in places where they feel constrained by cultural or financial strictures, they are more likely to go for what they consider a sure thing, which is a STEM career. I absolutely agree with and promote equal access to opportunities and education. But equal access to opportunities and education does not determine an equal result.

Hey, but every good progressive knows the only way to measure equality is not by equality of opportunity but equality of result, right?

[ADDENDUM: Oh, and by the way:

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victory

As he defeated ”“ dying ”“
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!]

I watched the Oscars so you didn’t have to

The New Neo Posted on by

I sort of watched them, anyway. That is, I watched a bit and then almost immediately got sick of listening to the relentless messaging. I have never personally witnessed a more self-righteous bunch of preening self-congratulatory PC hypocrites engaged in the activity of churning out bilge.

Then again, when you think about it, the Oscars have always been about self-congratulation, but long ago it was limited to praising themselves for making movies and acting in them. But now most of the recipients seem to be in the business of telling us how downtrodden and yet incredibly courageous they are.

So I turned the sound off, and then turned it on again briefly whenever I happened to notice something to which I might possibly want to listen—for example, Gary Oldman winning Best Actor for “Darkest Hour”.

But I cannot resist my annual fashion guide to the Oscars. And so, without further ado, we have—

One of the best, always: Helen Mirren, who is 72 and never looks anything less than fabulous. It helps to have a great body and posture that a younger person might envy, because although this dress and especially this color are beautiful, it wouldn’t look half this good with most of us in it:

Nicole Kidman is a skinny package with a big bow (which turns into pockets, each big enough to fit another Nicole Kidman into):

Maya Rudolph’s getup is odd:

Until you consider the popularity of “The Handmaid’s Tale”:

Jane Fonda looks scary to me:

Ming the Merciless:

Haley Bennett is channeling a rara avis, but not an attractive one (Bennett is on the right here; to the left is a photo of a model in the same dress):

Andra Day is a throwback:

To Fragonard:

Parrots are astounding

The New Neo Posted on by

As you can see.

I especially like the short sequence that begins around 5:35:

Why do parrots parrot? See this. It turns out that not only do they have a well-developed vocal apparatus as vocal learners, but they also want to fit in with the human flock.

Do they understand what they’re saying?:

For parrots, words may have some associations but not complex meanings, says Wright. “But they are very attuned to the context in which we use [words], and so I think that often fools people a little bit.” When a parrot says “Hello; how are you?” when its owner enters the room, for example, it’s “not necessarily interested in your well being” but is mimicking what it hears the owner saying when he or she comes in. In fact, a parrot’s understanding of “how are you,” is probably “Oh look, someone has come into the room.”

Then again, that’s not too different from people, is it? How many people who ask how you are really care about the answer?

Parrots are especially good at picking up profanity because they are “drawn to phrases and sounds associated with excitement and commotio.” Well, isn’t everyone?

And I find this rather fascinating:

… Those strolling in Sydney’s parks are being startled by squawks of “Hello darling!” and “What’s happening?” from the trees.

Wild birds such as galahs, sulphur-crested cockatoos and corellas are repeating phrases passed on by domesticated counterparts that escaped or were released, says naturalist Martyn Robinson, of Sydney’s Australian Museum.

[See also these posts.]

Have killings among teens increased?

The New Neo Posted on by

I keep reading online discussions in which people assume that there’s been a big increase in teen killings, both murder and suicide. It’s taken almost as a given, but I rarely if ever see anyone citing statistics to back up the assertions.

So of course I tried to look it up. First question: has there been a rise in teen suicide? Answer: no and yes (the following quotes are from an article dated November 2017):

An increase in suicide rates among US teens occurred at the same time social media use surged and a new analysis suggests there may be a link.

Suicide rates for teens rose between 2010 and 2015 after they had declined for nearly two decades, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Why the rates went up isn’t known.

The study doesn’t answer the question, but it suggests that one factor could be rising social media use.

What I get out of that is that for two decades suicide rates had been declining among teens, and there’s a recent uptick. Not only can the recent uptick not be explained, but I would guess that the previous two-decade decline cannot be explained, either. But I doubt most of you were aware of that decline; I wasn’t.

If you think that the strength of marriage and family has decreased over those decades, it certainly doesn’t seem to have been reflected in an increase in the suicide rates among teens. And as for the recent uptick, does it even begin to compare with the high figures from the 90s?

An organization called Child Trends tracks those statistics, and here’s a chart that shows suicides and homicides by teens aged 15-19 (as well as teen victims of homicides) from the 1970s to 2014, which should include most of the years involved in that uptick:

It’s a pretty shocking chart. What was going on with homicides and gun deaths from 1988 to 2000? I’m sure you can generate theories—and social scientists certainly have—but no one knows. One leading theory is, of course, that the widespread use of antidepressants was a highly contributing factor, but research does not indicate that was the case.

As for the line on the chart for suicides, the suicide bulge for those years was much much smaller and more gradual, with a gradual decline and then another slight upward climb that hasn’t reached the previous levels. Note that the chart only applies to teens between 15 and 19 years of age, although I am fairly sure that those are the peak teen years for those behaviors.

But it matters which age groups we’re talking about, because it turns out that between the ages of 15-24 suicides actually declined during that same period roughly corresponding to the 90s:

Before 1990, youth suicide rates in the U.S. had increased over the course of several decades. The rates were said to have tripled between 1953 and 1957 and between 1983 and 1987, rising from 2.46 to 9.64 per 100,000 persons 15 to 24 years of age; however, the increase might not have been as great as was initially believed, owing to a possible undercounting of youth suicides.7 Starting in 1990, however, the suicide rate in the U.S. among youths and young adults between 10 and 24 years of age began declining steadily, falling from 9.48 to 6.78 per 100,000 persons between 1990 and 2003.8 Yet between 2003 and 2004, the suicide rate increased by 8%, to 7.32 per 100,000””the largest single-year increase since 1990.

So how can we even generalize about this?

What’s more, here’s what that author has to say about the effect of SSRI prescriptions on the phenomenon:

It may be no coincidence that the long decline in youth suicide rates in the U.S. began soon after the start of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) era, which started in 1987 with the introduction of fluoxetine (Prozac, Lilly)…

In many countries, a correlation has been found between increases in prescriptions for newer antidepressants and decreased suicide rates. However, the experience has been the opposite in Iceland and Norway, where suicide rates have risen or have remained unchanged even as antidepressant prescribing increased substantially. None of these studies establish a causal relationship between antidepressant use and suicide rates, of course, and many other factors can affect suicide rates…But the preponderance of the ecological evidence points to a potential protective effect for antidepressants with respect to suicide.

Not long after SSRIs were introduced, however, an unsettling thought was raised: that instead of protecting patients, SSRIs might have resulted in a number of suicides…

In the U.S., concerns about antidepressants led the FDA in 2004 to require the addition of a boxed warning to the labeling of these medications. This warning mentioned an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in association with the use of antidepressants in pediatric patients. More recently, the boxed warning was revised to include young adults up to 24 years of age.

Both versions of the warning discuss the need to carefully monitor patients who begin treatment with antidepressants; incidentally, such advice had been given to clinicians long before the advent of SSRIs. The current version also mentions that depression and other psychiatric disorders are themselves associated with an increased risk of suicide. Recently, however, concern has grown that instead of promoting the monitoring of patients who initiate antidepressants, these well-intentioned actions have had unintended consequences: underdiagnosis and under-treatment of depression in patients of all ages and increased suicide rates in young people, following years of steady decline in the suicide rate.

I’ll leave it there for now. Books could be written on the subject, and no doubt have. But I’m not going to be writing one this afternoon.