Later On

In a comment thread, the issue of whether might makes right came up. Is a person (or nation) in the right in an action based purely on the fact that it can defeat those opposing the idea?

I take the position that this is pretty clearly not the case. Consider: we see “right” (or “justice”) as being stable and defined in objective terms. In an individual case, of course, reasoning is required and investigation called for. Each side (I believe) gets to put forward its best arguments and an impartial judge decides who is right and which course is just.

Of course, errors get made and upsets occur. But consider the alternative: A and B disagree, but B is weaker. Thus A is right. But now B is joined by his cousin C, and the two together are stronger than A, so A is wrong. But then A… etc. The “right” switches sides without regard to the merits of the case, merely by a comparison of strength. This is (to me) an irrational and unsupportable way of determining right. Indeed, this sort of “right” lacks the primary characteristics of what I think of as “right”.

But apparently some believe “right” switches around all the time—indeed, “right” more or less vanishes, and it becomes simply a dialogue and decision about relative strength.

Does anyone really hold that definition or “right”? Is it rational? Does it satisfy ANY system of ethics?

So far as I can tell, the sentiment has its origin in a Hobbesian state of nature, in which the life of an individual is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. So we (as humans) got away from the state of nature as fast as we could and began to discover the benefits of civilization, reason, law, and justice. That is the ideal to which we should appeal and the direction we should be going.

UPDATE: That’s the bottom line: disagreements are decided by might in the state of nature, but once we have civilization disagreements are decided by reason, argument, and impartial judgment by a third party. Civilization is, I believe, what we are working toward.

An article by Hanna Rosin in the latest issue of the Atlantic Monthly seemed quite interesting to me, but DougJ of Balloon Juice characterizes it as "a 5000 word whine-athon about how women are taking over the world (written by a woman, of course)", so you can see that we view it differently. (I actually didn’t even detect the whining, and I don’t quite see how the sex of the author is important—is he saying that because she’s a woman, she’s biased? or what?). Judge for yourself. The article begins:

IN THE 1970s the biologist Ronald Ericsson came up with a way to separate sperm carrying the male-producing Y chromosome from those carrying the X. He sent the two kinds of sperm swimming down a glass tube through ever-thicker albumin barriers. The sperm with the X chromosome had a larger head and a longer tail, and so, he figured, they would get bogged down in the viscous liquid. The sperm with the Y chromosome were leaner and faster and could swim down to the bottom of the tube more efficiently. Ericsson had grown up on a ranch in South Dakota, where he’d developed an Old West, cowboy swagger. The process, he said, was like “cutting out cattle at the gate.” The cattle left flailing behind the gate were of course the X’s, which seemed to please him. He would sometimes demonstrate the process using cartilage from a bull’s penis as a pointer.

In the late 1970s, Ericsson leased the method to clinics around the U.S., calling it the first scientifically proven method for choosing the sex of a child. Instead of a lab coat, he wore cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, and doled out his version of cowboy poetry. (People magazine once suggested a TV miniseries based on his life called Cowboy in the Lab.) The right prescription for life, he would say, was “breakfast at five-thirty, on the saddle by six, no room for Mr. Limp Wrist.” In 1979, he loaned out his ranch as the backdrop for the iconic “Marlboro Country” ads because he believed in the campaign’s central image—“a guy riding on his horse along the river, no bureaucrats, no lawyers,” he recalled when I spoke to him this spring. “He’s the boss.” (The photographers took some 6,500 pictures, a pictorial record of the frontier that Ericsson still takes great pride in.)

Feminists of the era did not take kindly to Ericsson and his Marlboro Man veneer. To them, the lab cowboy and his sperminator portended a dystopia of mass-produced boys. “You have to be concerned about the future of all women,” Roberta Steinbacher, a nun-turned-social-psychologist, said in a 1984 People profile of Ericsson. “There’s no question that there exists a universal preference for sons.” Steinbacher went on to complain about women becoming locked in as “second-class citizens” while men continued to dominate positions of control and influence. “I think women have to ask themselves, ‘Where does this stop?’” she said. “A lot of us wouldn’t be here right now if these practices had been in effect years ago.”

Ericsson, now 74, laughed when I read him these quotes from his old antagonist. Seldom has it been so easy to prove a dire prediction wrong. In the ’90s, when Ericsson looked into the numbers for the two dozen or so clinics that use his process, he discovered, to his surprise, that couples were requesting more girls than boys, a gap that has persisted, even though Ericsson advertises the method as more effective for producing boys. In some clinics, Ericsson has said, the ratio is now as high as 2 to 1. Polling data on American sex preference is sparse, and does not show a clear preference for girls. But the picture from the doctor’s office unambiguously does. A newer method for sperm selection, called MicroSort, is currently completing Food and Drug Administration clinical trials. The girl requests for that method run at about 75 percent.

Even more unsettling for Ericsson, it has become clear that in choosing the sex of the next generation, he is no longer the boss. “It’s the women who are driving all the decisions,” he says—a change the MicroSort spokespeople I met with also mentioned. At first, Ericsson says, women who called his clinics would apologize and shyly explain that they already had two boys. “Now they just call and [say] outright, ‘I want a girl.’ These mothers look at their lives and think their daughters will have a bright future their mother and grandmother didn’t have, brighter than their sons, even, so why wouldn’t you choose a girl?” …

Continue reading.

Take a look: 45 brands, 2 blades each.

Steve Horn at the Center for Media and Democracy:

As per usual, when push comes to shove, the right-wing Israeli government, along with the Israel Defense Forces spinmeisters, have gone back to the simple formula: when they do something illegal and barbaric, blame the victim, for the United States will obligingly agree and stand by that narrative. Like always, while the rest of the world protests in condemnation and speaks out against Israel‘s actions and crimes, the U.S. government stands by complicitly, continuing to shower Israel with over $3 billion per year in military aid into perpetuity.

A Bit of Background is in Order

In 2006 Hamas, an Islamist faction inspired from the Egyptian Islamic Brotherhood, won a fair and clean democratic election in the Palestinian Occupied Territories that was praised as such by The Carter Center. In return, the U.S., Israel, and the European Union subsequently decided that the people of Gaza chose the wrong elected officials and held them accountable for it, with Israel implementing a blockade by land, air, and sea, furthering their stranglehold over the people of Gaza. They imposed sanctions suspending all foreign aid, upon which Gazans depend, which has since turned into a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions.

Next came an attempted coup of the Hamas government in late-2006 through mid-2007. The Fatah military, backed and trained by the United States, attempted to violently overthrow the Hamas government and failed to do so, which resulted in 120 deaths and the strengthening of Hamas, as well as a de-unification of the Palestinian government at-large, with Hamas now leading the people of the Gaza Strip and Fatah now leading the people of the West Bank.

Blazing along, late 2008 and early 2009 brought Operation Cast Lead, or what Amnesty International called "22 days of death and destruction" in the Gaza Strip. It was Israel’s punishment for rogue Islamic factions shooting rockets into Israel. Israel was charged with war crimes and possible crimes against humanity by the Judge Richard Goldstone. Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including 300 children, hundreds of other unarmed civilians, and over 115 women and some 85 men aged over 50.

While the U.S. government rushed to applaud Israel for acting in self-defense, the rest of the world saw things differently, and saw what ensued as not a war, but a bloody massacre. While the world protested and condemned, again, the U.S. government sat by idly, or worse, applauded the massacre. The infrastructure of Gaza, already crippled by the siege, was now destroyed. Gaza to this day remains besieged.

Enter, the Freedom Flotilla

It is in this context that the Freedom Flotilla set sail to the Strip in an attempt to free Gaza and end the blockade. The ship was part of the Free Gaza Movement, whose self-described purpose is "to break the siege of Gaza. We want to raise international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip and pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy and end its support for continued Israeli occupation. We want to uphold Palestine’s right to welcome internationals as visitors, human rights observers, humanitarian aid workers, journalists, or otherwise. We have not and will not ask for Israel’s permission. It is our intent to overcome this brutal siege through civil resistance and non-violent direct action, and establish a permanent sea lane between Gaza and the rest of the world." It was the ninth Free Gaza seat delegation ever sent to the Gaza Strip and many more are to come, including a Jewish-led one in mid-July.

The Mari Marvara, along with six other ships, set sail to deliver 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid, with a value of $20 million, including food and medicine, and building materials such as cement. In the middle of the night on June 1, 2010, shooting their way onto the ship from above, the IDF commandos boarded the Mari Marvara and killed nine of the aid-carrying activists, wounding dozens of others nearly 70 miles off of the coast of Gaza.

The Israeli Spin Machine

Israel got to tell its story first, as it imprisoned all of the journalists and activists on the ship for two to three days, disseminating its videos and account throughout the world and not allowing for any passenger rebuttal. Israel released videos showing those on the ships beating up the IDF with metal poles, with hard-to-take-seriously Orientalist pictures of knife-wielding Islamic men, pictures of weapons spread on the floor of the Mari Marvara, and going so far as to say that this was a terrorist mission affiliated with Al-Qaeda, so Israel had every right in the world to "defend" itself.

But, as Phil Weiss of Mondoweiss blog asked, "Does this story pass the laugh test?" The answer is a resounding "no," yet those who are blind supporters of Israel ate it up anyway and myth became reality, victims became victimizers, and a heinous crime committed by the IDF became a two-tiered storyline that is somehow up for debate.

While protests raged throughout the world, including here in the U.S. and also in Israel, most members of Congress, along with the Obama Administration, failed to condemn Israel, lending legitimacy to Israel’s implausible account. Dozens even condoned. Two members of Congress did condemn Israel: Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

Now that the other side of the story is being told, though, nearly everything the IDF has said is being refuted.

Read the rest of this entry »

Many—indeed, most—American politicians and pundits frequently condemn in the strongest languages practices by other nations that correspond exactly what the US does, but somehow it is okay for the US to do it, just other nations should not be allowed. This, of course, makes no sense and even children understand that you cannot logically condemn another for doing what you yourself do.

Read this post for an entire rotting, stinking bouquet of examples from John McCain.

I’ve been having some discussion in comments, and I thought this post by Greenwald might help clarify things:

Chuck Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate, spoke to an event of Orthodox Jewish leaders on Wednesday and made comments that can only be described as bigoted and disgusting.  Kudos to Zaid Jilani who, despite working for the Democratic Party-serving Center for American Progress, wrote about Schumer’s remarks on CAP’s ThinkProgress blog and explained the reasons they were filled with falsehoods, or — as he put it — "as offensive as they are wrong."

Schumer told his audience that the "Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution" and added that "they don’t believe in the Torah, in David."  As a result,"you have to force them to say Israel is here to stay."  It’s the Israeli blockade which accomplishes that, he argued.  And Schumer is due some credit for being honest enough (unlike most devoted Israel defenders) to admit that a prime purpose of the blockade has nothing to do with keeping arms away from Hamas, but rather, is to economically strangle the people in Gaza — meaning not Hamas, but the 1.5 million human beings (men, women and children) who live there:

And to me, since the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, while certainly there should be humanitarian aid and people not starving to death, to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go, makes sense.

So as long as Israel stops just short of starving them all to death, then what Israel is doing is justified — just like John Yoo explained that American torture is perfectly legal and permissible just as long as it stops short of causing major organ failure or death (or, as Juan Cole put it, "anything short of ‘starving to death’, i.e. mass extermination in the camps, is all right as long as it convinces the enemy?").  I think the most repugnant part of Schumer’s comments is when he spoke about Gazans as though they were dogs needing to be trained to behave properly:  the blockade is justified because it shows the Palestinians living there that "when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement."  Is that — punish the people of Gaza for the acts of Terrorists — not the very definition of "collective punishment," which happens to be a war crime under the Geneva Conventions?  The crowd — as the video of Schumer’s speech reflects (below) — erupted in wild cheers at his comments. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Wind turbines do kill birds and bats (apparently from decompression rather than striking them). But wind turbines kill on a tiny fraction of birds killed in the normal course of their life. Take a look at this comprehensive report.

And, of course, the bird deaths to date and nothing compared to what we’ll see as global warming continues to increase. At that point, though, we’re more likely to be worried about our own survival more than that of birds and other animals.

Via Open Culture:

Steve Benen:

President Obama chatted with Politico‘s Roger Simon yesterday, and the original headline on the piece was pretty misleading: "Obama to Politico: Congress shares the blame for BP." The revised headline was a little more specific, but still missed the point: "Obama to Politico: GOP shares the blame for spill."

I haven’t seen the entire transcript, but based on what the magazine published, that doesn’t appear to be the point the president made in the interview.

In an interview with POLITICO, the president said: "I think it’s fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had gone up to Congress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case of a catastrophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is classic, big-government overregulation and wasteful spending."

The president also implied that anti-big government types such as Tea Party activists were being hypocritical on the issue.

"Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying ‘do something’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much," Obama said. "Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms."

This doesn’t sound like a president trying to extend blame, so much as it’s Obama taking note of the fatal flaw in Republicans’ attacks.

And can anyone seriously disagree with his analysis? Imagine if, before the April 20 explosion, the White House had announced its desire to expand government regulation of the oil industry, impose new safety and emergency mandates, and spend taxpayer money on equipment and technology. Is there any doubt what we’d hear from Republicans, their lobbyist allies, and the media that’s been trained to be on the lookout for "big government"?

It often goes unsaid — which is why I’m glad Obama said it — but this simple truth is the problem that underscores the right’s criticism of the administration’s response. Conservatives are dissatisfied with the president’s actions to date, but what they tend to downplay is that they’d be even more dissatisfied with the kind of steps that would have prevented the disaster in the first place.

It’s why GOP arguments have taken on a child-like quality: the disaster happened, Obama’s president, therefore blame the disaster on Obama.

The Politico headline notwithstanding, this isn’t about the president assigning blame; it’s about drawing attention to the fact that government regulation and spending can prevent catastrophes like these — and the critics on the right can’t have it both ways.

Steve Benen:

It came together largely under the radar, but Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) helped create a task force on Pentagon spending, featuring a team of credible defense experts. They’ve reached some interesting conclusions.

A panel commissioned by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is recommending nearly $1 trillion in cuts to the Pentagon’s budget during the next 10 years.

The Sustainable Defense Task Force, a commission of scholars from a broad ideological spectrum appointed by Frank, the House Financial Services Committee chairman, laid out actions the government could take that could save as much as $960 billion between 2011 and 2020.

Measures presented by the task force include making significant reductions to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, which has strong support from Defense Secretary Robert Gates; delaying the procurement of a new midair refueling tanker the Air Force has identified as one of its top acquisition priorities; and reducing the Navy’s fleet to 230 ships instead of the 313 eyed by the service.

Among the other possible cuts are savings from reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and reducing U.S. routine military presence in Europe and Asia.

Frank continues to present this approach in the context of priorities and choices — policymakers could agree to these defense cuts without undermining our national security interests, or policymakers interested in reducing the deficit can raise taxes and cut already-short-changed domestic investments.

What’s more, this need not be considered a partisan exercise. As The Hill noted, "Frank requested the creation of the task force in cooperation with Reps. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)."

There’s little reason for optimism on this front; far too many policymakers consider the Pentagon budget entirely off-limits, despite the fact that the United States now spends about as much on defense as every other country on the planet combined. For a Congress so concerned about deficits that it’s willing to let unemployment benefits expire for struggling families, it’s hardly outrageous to think some budget savings can be found in the enormous Pentagon budget.

That said, Frank’s commission does offer alleged deficit hawks an opportunity to rise to the occasion. As Paul Waldman recently explained, "They’re quite happy to borrow hundreds of billions to spend on defense, because they just happen to like spending money on defense…. You can’t call yourself a ‘deficit hawk’ if the only programs you want to cut are the ones you don’t like anyway."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said, publicly and repeatedly, that the United States can’t keep spending such vast amounts of money on the military indefinitely. Any chance conservative deficit hawks — the ones who claim to be desperate to cut government spending — will step up and agree?

Or, perhaps, a life spent in making science fiction into engineering fact. This article in the NY Times by Ashlee Vance is fascinating:

ON a Tuesday evening this spring, Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, became part man and part machine. About 40 people, all gathered here at a NASA campus for a nine-day, $15,000 course at Singularity University, saw it happen.

While the flesh-and-blood version of Mr. Brin sat miles away at a computer capable of remotely steering a robot, the gizmo rolling around here consisted of a printer-size base with wheels attached to a boxy, head-height screen glowing with an image of Mr. Brin’s face. The BrinBot obeyed its human commander and sputtered around from group to group, talking to attendees about Google and other topics via a videoconferencing system.

The BrinBot was hardly something out of “Star Trek.” It had a rudimentary, no-frills design and was a hodgepodge of loosely integrated technologies. Yet it also smacked of a future that the Singularity University founders hold dear and often discuss with a techno-utopian bravado: the arrival of the Singularity — a time, possibly just a couple decades from now, when a superior intelligence will dominate and life will take on an altered form that we can’t predict or comprehend in our current, limited state.

At that point, the Singularity holds, human beings and machines will so effortlessly and elegantly merge that poor health, the ravages of old age and even death itself will all be things of the past.

Some of Silicon Valley’s smartest and wealthiest people have embraced the Singularity. They believe that technology may be the only way to solve the world’s ills, while also allowing people to seize control of the evolutionary process. For those who haven’t noticed, the Valley’s most-celebrated company — Google — works daily on building a giant brain that harnesses the thinking power of humans in order to surpass the thinking power of humans.

Larry Page, Google’s other co-founder, helped set up Singularity University in 2008, and the company has supported it with more than $250,000 in donations. Some of Google’s earliest employees are, thanks to personal donations of $100,000 each, among the university’s “founding circle.” (Mr. Page did not respond to interview requests.)

The university represents the more concrete side of the Singularity, and focuses on introducing entrepreneurs to promising technologies. Hundreds of students worldwide apply to snare one of 80 available spots in a separate 10-week “graduate” course that costs $25,000. Chief executives, inventors, doctors and investors jockey for admission to the more intimate, nine-day courses called executive programs.

Both courses include face time with leading thinkers in the areas of nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, energy, biotech, robotics and computing.

On a more millennialist and provocative note, the Singularity also offers a modern-day …

Continue reading.

Amazon has changed quite a bit over the years. For example, I noticed this on Amazon today (click image to enlarge, link to go to the Amazon page):

If you are a Father and you want a copy of Leisureguy’s Guide to Gourmet Shaving for Father’s Day, you should now escalate the hinting. Or, if you’re considering a gift for a Father who shaves, especially one who doesn’t like shaving, time to order a copy in order to have it in time. Amazon.com is your best bet for fast delivery, or you can order an autographed copy from any of several on-line shaving vendors.

This is a hopeless war because Afghanistan lacks a government that can take over. Either we stay forever, or we start disengaging. Bob Herbert has a clear assessment in the NY Times:

There is no good news coming out of the depressing and endless war in Afghanistan. There once was merit to our incursion there, but that was long ago. Now we’re just going through the tragic motions, flailing at this and that, with no real strategy or decent end in sight.

The U.S. doesn’t win wars anymore. We just funnel the stressed and underpaid troops in and out of the combat zones, while all the while showering taxpayer billions on the contractors and giant corporations that view the horrors of war as a heaven-sent bonanza. BP, as we’ve been told repeatedly recently, is one of the largest suppliers of fuel to the wartime U.S. military.

Seven American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on Monday but hardly anyone noticed. Far more concern is being expressed for the wildlife threatened by the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico than for the G.I.’s being blown up in the wilds of Afghanistan.

Early this year, we were told that at long last the tide had turned in Afghanistan, that the biggest offensive of the war by American, British and Afghan troops was under way in Marja, a town in Helmand Province in the southern part of the country. The goal, as outlined by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, our senior military commander in Afghanistan, was to rout the Taliban and install a splendid new government that would be responsive to the people and beloved by them.

That triumph would soon be followed by another military initiative in the much larger expanse of neighboring Kandahar Province. The Times’s Rod Nordland explained what was supposed to happen in a front-page article this week:

The goal that American planners originally outlined — often in briefings in which reporters agreed not to quote officials by name — emphasized the importance of a military offensive devised to bring all of the populous and Taliban-dominated south under effective control by the end of this summer. That would leave another year to consolidate gains before President Obama’s July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing combat troops.

Forget about it. Commanders can’t even point to a clear-cut success in Marja. As for Kandahar, no one will even use the word “offensive” to describe the military operations there. The talk now is of moving ahead with civilian reconstruction projects, a “civilian surge,” as Mr. Nordland noted.

What’s happening in Afghanistan is not only tragic, it’s embarrassing…

Continue reading. There’s also the small point that the US can no longer afford this expensive war.

Oh, I have to do this:

Basic Maraschino Cherries

These are easy to assemble. The only hard part is waiting out the full two-week maceration period.

1 pound ripe, thoroughly washed cherries (stems and pits intact)
2 to 3 cups Luxardo Maraschino liqueur

Place the cherries in a glass Mason jar or other container with a lid. Pour the liqueur over the cherries. The goal is to add enough liqueur to immerse the cherries, but they will bob to the top of the liquid anyway.

Refrigerate for at least 2 weeks. Gently swirl the container every 2 to 3 days to immerse the cherries in the liqueur.

Read the entire article. More recipes at the link, utilizing the homemade Maraschino cherries (and also a recipe for a non-alcoholic version).

From Liz Weston’s "Money Talk" column in the LA Times:

Dear Liz: I really screwed up. I decided I wanted to go to a private college and am now saddled with $145,000 in private student loans and $30,000 in federal student loans. I am working on my master’s degree and am about to have a child. I’m looking at payment options for when I graduate and am very scared for my family’s future. I can’t afford to pay $1,000 or more a month in student loans and I really want to buy a house so my family can have a home. What should I do?

Answer: You may have to give up your dream of homeownership. Maybe not forever, but probably for a long while.

The amount of debt you took on is staggering. In general, people shouldn’t borrow more for an education than they expect to make the first year out of school — and there aren’t many jobs that pay $175,000 at entry level.

Your options are few. You typically can’t erase student loans in bankruptcy, and there is no statute of limitations on the debt, meaning your lenders can pursue you until you’re dead.

You may be able to qualify for forgiveness on your federal student loans. People who work in public service jobs for 10 years can have the remaining balance forgiven, while those who work in other jobs can get forgiveness after 25 years. For more, visit FinAid.org and search for "loan forgiveness."

In any case, you should pay only the minimum on your federal loans and put as much as possible toward the private student loans, which have variable rates and less flexible repayment options. You’re learning this too late, but paying for college with private student loans is a lot like using credit cards, except you don’t have the possibility of wiping out the debt in bankruptcy.

Obviously, the student could have skipped college—but the consequences of that are also enormous, and indeed the country is stronger with more of its citizens being educated—which is why we have free public education through the 12th grade. A 12th grade education does not, however, qualify a person for full participation in our economy now, so government support should, I think, extend through the Bachelor’s degree. At one point California had a fantastic higher-education system, but the Proposition 13 started the process that’s led to the state facing bankruptcy and the high-education system is now a skeleton of its former self.

OTOH, home ownership is pushed a little too hard. I’m an apartment dweller, and I rather like the life—I am required to do very little in the way of maintenance and repair: that’s the landlord’s job. And I don’t have to work on the yard. On still another hand, I do note one drawback of apartment life is the lack of a backyard: a semi-private outdoor space for exercise, a little garden, enjoyment of lying on the grass in the speckled shade of a large tree. Public parks don’t really do the job. For example, I would like to exercise outdoors with the kettlebell, but I don’t want to try that in a park. But perhaps I will.

Or, as Nick observes in comments, really the Gaza siege. The idea, as Chuck Schumer put it, is to squeeze the Palestinians unmercifully until they turn on their leaders. Just the normal interaction between sovereign nations: one is always free to use economic pressure and outright war to force the other to their will. Oh, wait—Israel greatly objects when that action is taken against it. So why is it okay for Israel to do that to another? (Hint: it’s not.)

Take the opening of this report by Edmund Sanders in the LA Times. Read it and see how for sure the effect will be to turn this family against the Palestinian leaders, while at the same time encouraging respect and love for Israel and a feeling that Israel is a fair and trustworthy country. Here’s the anecdote:

Reporting from Gaza City — Don’t ask Hatem Hajaj whether there’s a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

Four months ago, the unemployed salesclerk’s son was born with a heart blockage. Doctors told Hajaj that the baby’s only hope was transfer to a Jerusalem hospital because Gaza lacked a pediatric surgery unit.

While his son, Mohamed, fought to breathe on a ventilator, Hajaj spent a week gathering the transfer documents needed under Israel’s strict border rules. Then there was another agonizing week, watching as his son’s tiny body began to bloat as he waited for an answer.

Approval finally came — two days after Mohamed died.

"Why should it take so long for a days-old innocent baby with such a serious problem?" asked Hajaj, 37, in his Gaza City home, clutching the medical records and authorization form that came too late. "No crisis? I lost my son. We’re not treated like human beings. Let me ask you: Would Israelis accept to live under these conditions?"

Continue reading if you want. Later in the story: "On average two patients die every month waiting for Israeli permits to leave Gaza for treatment, according to the World Health Organization."

See, what I think happens is that Israel has now created enemies for life: an entire family that will always remember Israel as killing their little baby.

But in fact, I think Israel really doesn’t care whether the Palestinians regard them with favor or not. Indeed, I don’t think Israel cares about the Palestinians at all, but regards them as intruders whose houses and land are up for grabs. So far as the death of the baby: I believe that Israel would simply say, "Nits make lice."

Israel can clearly show that it wants peace, and even probably gain some Palestinian allies, if it would stop now building illegal settlements and abandon those illegal settlements already in place, turning them back over to the Palestinians. But Israel will never do that because (a) Israel has no respect for the law or its agreements, and (b) Israel wants the Palestinians to go away.

I base these conclusions on Israel’s actions. Am I wrong?

Staying with the spirit if not the exact letter of my first-week regimen, I made a stir fry as follows:

2 tsp sesame oil (a cheat, clear and simple)

Get that hot in large cast-iron skillet, then add

1 chopped shallot

Let that sauté for a few minutes (depending on how hot the skillet became), then add:

5 oz lean beef cut into thin strips

Sauté for a few minutes, turning beef as it browns. Increase heat if needed. Add:

1 c steamed green beans
1 c steamed broccoli
1/2 c brown rice (cooked in the broth from poaching the chicken breasts)

Stir and sauté until heated through and beginning to crisp. The add:

1/2 c beef broth (which I made from Penzeys Soup Base)
good dash soy sauce
good dash black Chinese vinegar
good dash Annie’s Naturals Worcestershire sauce
good shake of crushed red pepper
[and, had I thought of it, some crushed Szechuan pepper---dang! next time for sure]

I stirred that as it boiled and continued stirring until the liquid was reduced to a sauce.

Wonderful.

I recall reading some time ago about the career arc of the very top level of women who act as escorts professionally. These are the women whom billionaires hire for the weekend or vacation month.

What I read was that the women who did this made enormous amounts of money for a year or two—but then the requests dried up. The article explained that something develops—a kind of cynicism and jadedness—and it shows in the eyes.

I was thinking about that, and thought that almost certainly it didn’t show “in the eyes,” but rather in posture, breathing, reactions, speech: it’s the natural result of many experiences of sufficient rarity and intensity. It’s a matter of the person (naturally enough) being affected by what they do, and learning through their experience.

What had been lost was the intensity of innocence, of the reactions and excitement of encountering pleasurable things, new sights, novel events for the very first time. After a year or two of that, the woman of course will not be able to react honestly and spontaneously as at the very first time. Faking it will not work for long, and the men paying for the company will look for a new escort—someone totally fresh and young and unspoiled—to have for a year or two to feast off her reactions, getting his energy from being around youthful excitement. And when the excitement fades, the current woman is dropped and a new one brought on.

In the article it said that women who had been through this had a difficult time transitioning back into the real world. The smart ones had their benefactor start them in some business—a fashion store, say, or a perfumery—and used their experience and contacts to build a career. Others simply swirled, at a loss, finding re-engagement with the mundane world difficult.

It struck me that the men who hire these young women to, in  effect, drain them of their élan vital are the true vampires, in our very midst.

UPDATE: The draining of the élan vital (or, alternately, using up such a portion of “first” experiences and living at such a high level of luxury) would, if true, tend to deprive these women of feelings of happiness and joy the first years after their removal from the life: everything in mundane life would seem so second-rate, scarred, and random, a great let-down.

Remember these guys?