Month: August 2014

Childhood Memories

by Sue Halpern

Last week, Dr. David Sulzer’s lab at Columbia Medical School reported that researchers were able to reverse the symptoms of autism in mice by administering a drug that prunes synapses. Though scientists have known of the connection between synaptic overload and autism, this was the first time that they have been able to show that pruning synapses is palliative. What might seem counterintuitive that the human brain needs to shed neurons to develop normally, that, in fact, is what needs to happen between birth and puberty. Think of it as clearing out the attic so you can make clear pathways to what you’ve got stored up there. (When you read Bill’s post, One Perfect Thing, you will understand why this analogy seems especially apt to me today.) More to the point, many of the 100 billion neurons we are born with are not yet connected. As neurons are shed, there is more and more room for connections to be made. According to one source I read, at birth, each neuron has about 2500 synaptic connections and by three that number has grown to about 15,000, and continues to increase exponentially.  According to another,

At birth the baby has 50 trillion connections or synapses

In the first three months of life, the synapses multiply more than 20 times

At one year the brain has 1,000 trillion synapses.

The takeaway, here, numbers aside, is that as neurons are shed, connections are made.

So I was particularly interested in Ferris Jabr’s explanation for why we forget childhood memories, which in the end may turn out to be a very good thing:

Studies have shown that people can retrieve at least some childhood memories by responding to specific prompts—dredging up the earliest recollection associated with the word “milk,” for example—or by imagining a house, school, or specific location tied to a certain age and allowing the relevant memories to bubble up on their own.

But even if we manage to untangle a few distinct memories that survive the tumultuous cycles of growth and decay in the infant brain, we can never fully trust them; some of them might be partly or entirely fabricated. Through her pioneering research, Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California, Irvine has demonstrated that our earliest memories in particular are often insoluble blends of genuine recollections, narratives we sponged up from others, and imaginary scenes dreamt up by the subconscious.

In one set of groundbreaking experiments conducted in 1995, Loftus and her colleagues presented volunteers with short stories about their childhood provided by relatives. Unbeknownst to the study participants, one of these stories—about being lost in a mall at age 5—was mostly fiction. Yet a quarter of the volunteers said they had a memory of the experience. And even when they were told that one of the stories they had read was invented, some participants failed to realize it was the lost-in-a-mall story.

Libya Just Keeps Getting Worse

by Dish Staff

Meanwhile, in Libya, the The NYT reports that Egypt and the UAE have secretly launched airstrikes on Islamist militias battling for control of Tripoli:

Since the military ouster of the Islamist president in Egypt one year ago, the new Egyptian government, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have formed a bloc exerting influence in countries around the region to rollback what they see as a competing threat from Islamists. Arrayed against them are the Islamist movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood, backed by friendly governments in Turkey and Qatar, that sprang forward amid the Arab spring revolts. Libya is the latest, and hottest, battleground.

Several officials said that United States diplomats were fuming about the airstrikes, believing they could further inflame the Libyan conflict at a time when the United Nations and Western powers are seeking a peaceful resolution. “We don’t see this as constructive at all,” said one senior American official. … The strikes have also proved counterproductive so-far: the Islamist militias fighting for control of Tripoli successfully seized its airport the night after they were hit with the second round of strikes.

As the above image shows, the capital’s airport has been almost completely destroyed in fighting between the Misratan and Zintani militias. Ishaan Tharoor flags the recently released footage of a “public execution” by an Islamist militia, which further illustrates how the already tenuous security situation is deteriorating:

In the footage, which is available on YouTube, masked gunmen waving black flags bring a blindfolded Egyptian man identified as Mohammad Ahmad Mohammad onto the field in a pick-up truck. He is eventually shot in the head by a person dressed in civilian clothes, believed to be the brother of a man Mohammad is said to have killed. The murder is one of the starkest instances yet of Islamist groups enacting sharia law in the country. (Since Gaddafi’s fall, Salafists have also set about attacking the shrines of Sufi saints.) “This unlawful killing realizes the greatest fears of ordinary Libyans, who in parts of the country find themselves caught between ruthless armed groups and a failed state,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, the organization’s Middle East and North Africa deputy director, in Amnesty’s press release.

Siddhartha Mahanta warned last week that the country was rapidly falling apart:

[F]ighting has only grown more intense over the summer, raising questions about whether Libya is on the fast track to civil war — or already in one. On Monday, planes of initially unknown origin conducted airstrikes on Islamist targets in Tripoli. Then, in the early hours of Tuesday, unidentified militants shelled an affluent section of Tripoli with Grad rockets, killing three. And, yes, that’s the same kind of artillery Russia has been accused of firing across the Ukrainian border. Who fired the Grad rockets remains a mystery, but eventually Gen. Khalifa Haftar, a onetime Qaddafi loyalist turned revolutionary and now a hardened anti-Islamist fighter, took credit for the airstrikes. Haftar said it’s part of his broader campaign for control of the city and airport, though there’s still some question as to whether Libyan planes could have been in any shape to conduct the strikes.

Not for the first time, Larison attributes this chaos to our “successful” intervention there in 2011:

While it is possible that Libya would still be suffering from internal conflicts in the absence of outside intervention in 2011, it is far more likely that aiding in the destruction of the old regime condemned Libya and its neighbors to the destabilizing and destructive effects of armed conflict for an even longer period of time. It was not an accident that Libya’s immediate neighbors were among the least supportive of the U.S.-led war, since they were always going to be the ones to experience the war’s harmful effects. Unfortunately for the civilian population in Libya, they will be living with the dangerous consequences of that “humanitarian” intervention for years and perhaps even decades to come. Considering that the war was justified entirely in the name of protecting civilians from violence, it has to be judged one of the most conspicuous failures and blunders of U.S. policy in the last decade. The desire to “help” Libyans with military action has directly contributed to the wrecking of their country. The lesson from all this that the U.S. and its allies shouldn’t be forcibly overthrowing foreign governments is an obvious one, and one that I am confident that all relevant policymakers in Washington will be sure to ignore.

Parental Whoa-vershare

by Phoebe Maltz Bovy

So the most egregious example of parental overshare that I’ve yet encountered has just appeared. Depressingly, it’s in the same publication as my own first published piece on the topic. It’s from a father who caught his 9-year-old son looking at porn:

His eyes darted back and forth, as if looking for an escape hatch inside his own head.  He was formulating a plan, something to get out of this situation, and then he stopped. His brow furrowed.

“Wait,” he said, sitting back upright. And then he followed up with possibly the sweetest thing he ever asked me, given the context. “What’s porn?”

I couldn’t help but smile. His defense hadn’t been self-preservation so much as it was genuine confusion. “It’s videos and pictures of people having sex,” I told him. He slumped back into embarrassment. “Oh. Then, yes. I looked at porn.”

Totes adorbs! Oh, and the author’s writing under what we can assume is his real name, and provides his son’s name and nickname. In case this wasn’t traumatizing enough for the kid, we also get specifics of his surfing habits:

My brain registered the title of a web page in the middle of the history list before my eyes really focused on anything.

8:41 PM    http://www.bimbos.com    Free XXX Vids: Sheila, The Queen of Ana…

I expanded the Page Title column to see the whole thing and was dismayed, but not surprised, to find that Sheila was not the Queen of Analogies. There were several more pages visited in rapid succession, all featuring women giving jobs that had nothing to do with our nation’s unemployment rates. Finally, the browser history showed, a Google search for “sex videos” had led to brief visits in the Internet’s nether regions before he’d apparently seen enough. I called his mother the next day.

What’s so jarring to me is now normal this sort of essay has become. No one bats an eye! Everyone’s happy to discuss their thoughts on this father’s approach to childrearing, happy to have the ‘so how does one address porn with young kids?’ conversation, and somehow missing that the most private moments of a specific child’s life are not fodder for an article in a much-shared publication. And the worst of it is, the father here totally got that this wasn’t a public moment. Recounting the talk, he writes, “‘So, I have to talk to you,’ I told him, once we were inside the car and away from other ears.” Other ears? Does the Atlantic‘s readership not count?

Inspired by this article, a parental-overshare checklist, to go through before pitching a story about your kid:

  • How would you feel if such an article existed about you? As in, from your childhood, by one of your parents? How would you have felt if you’d discovered such an article at 14, 17, 22?
  • Is what you’re sharing something you’d feel you had the authority to share, on that scale, about your best friend or partner?
  • Is there a way to address this issue without talking about your kid? Who is identifiable even if you’re a woman with a different last name from said kid? Who, even if reasonably unidentifiable (i.e. no first or last name given) will still read the article and know exactly whom “my daughter” refers to?

The Purpose Of Crime Stats

by Dish Staff

Dara Lind reveals it:

There’s often talk about the need for better statistics on officer-involved homicides as a matter of public transparency. But that’s not the primary reason that police departments collect statistics. The ostensible purpose of collecting statistics, for most police departments, is to guide internal strategy and help them figure out where to allocate resources. Furthermore, police use crime stats to look better in the eyes of the public, or on a federal grant application. That means they can be skewed, intentionally or not, by what will make the cops look best. That’s certainly true in the case of officer-involved shootings, but it’s true of other types of crimes as well.

Patrick Ball of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group says that cops want to record crimes that they know they can solve. Unsolved homicides look bad for police departments — and might hurt their ability to get federal funding. And “for non-fatal violations,” where there’s no body for the cops to explain away, underreporting is “much, much worse.”

One Perfect Thing

by Bill McKibben

home2_4

Always a bit disconcerting to find yourself part of a trend, but on a day when the most e-mailed story at the NYT is about older people getting rid of their clutter, Sue and I are…waiting for the delivery of a dumpster, so we can dispose of some of the detritus of 30 years of living on and off in the mountains of the Adirondacks. The sheer volume of useless junk that even a fairly resolute anti-materialist manages to acquire is staggering, and I can feel a weight lifting off me as it goes.

But it did get me thinking about the few possessions I truly love, and why. On my short list, most are built for use in the outdoors: my mountain bike, my cross-country racing skis, and near the very top of the list my solo canoe. It’s built by a neighbor, Pete Hornbeck, who has made a good living producing these small craft for decades. It’s light as a feather, sturdy, and stable even in a good chop–in other words, perfect for these Adirondack woods, where 3,000 ponds, streams and lakes are connected by short bushwhacking portages. You can plunk a backpack in the boat, paddle to the carry, and then sling the canoe over your shoulder like a handbag as you head off for the next body of water. And it’s no wonder it works so well: these are Kevlar (or carbon fiber if you’re rich) knockoffs of a classic wooden boat, the Wee Lassie, built for an early Adirondack guide and now enshrined in the boat room at the prize-winning regional museum.

My Hornbeck boat would itself be useless clutter in other parts of the country, and it got me wondering if other people had prize possessions, tuned to place and season, that warmed their hearts. Share yours by emailing dish@andrewsullivan.com. And now back to the serious business of discarding.

(Photo: Hornbeck Boats)

Fighting Disease Pays Dividends

by Dish Staff

Charles Kenny makes the economic case for eradicating Ebola:

There are straightforwardly selfish reasons for rich countries to work with poor countries to eradicate infectious diseases. While Ebola in its current form is an unlikely candidate as a serious health threat to Americans or Europeans, other diseases, from AIDS to West Nile virus, are reminders that infections that start or survive in the developing world can become considerable threats to the health of people in wealthier societies. Reducing the risk of such diseases has a global benefit.

The fight against smallpox is a case in point. Annual expenditure on the global smallpox eradication campaign from 1967 to 1979 was $23 million. Since eradication in 1980, the U.S. has recouped nearly 500-fold the value of its contribution to that effort in saved vaccination and treatment costs. And although smallpox remains the only scourge to have been intentionally wiped off the face of the earth (minus a few refrigerators), global progress against other infections has been dramatic enough to save considerable medical costs the world over. The U.S. doesn’t regularly vaccinate against tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, or cholera because rates are low enough at home and in nearby countries that the the threat they pose is minimal.

Meanwhile, Laura Seay and Kim Yi Dionne rip to shreds Newsweek’s fear-mongering Ebola cover story:

The Newsweek story implies increased vulnerability to Ebola in the United States, which psychology research shows will likely amplify negative reactions to people heuristically associated with the disease — in this case, the many African migrants living in the Bronx (and potentially elsewhere in the United States) accused by Newsweek of liking bushmeat (never mind that Newsweek’s investigative reporters were never able to locate any for sale). The negative reactions to increased vulnerability include having more xenophobic attitudes. …

Fear-mongering narratives about Ebola circulating in the popular media can also have a serious effect on knowledge and attitudes about Ebola. Though there are no cases of person-to-person infection in the United States, a recent poll conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health reports 39 percent of Americans think there will be a large Ebola outbreak in the United States and more than a quarter of Americans are concerned that they or someone in their immediate family may get sick with Ebola in the next year.

Israel Gets Into The Demolition Business

by Dish Staff

One of Israel’s air strikes in Gaza this weekend leveled an entire apartment building:

The Israeli military said that it destroyed the building because it contained a Hamas command center, though spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner “could not immediately specify which floor, or floors, of the building were the targets in the attack, or whether the intention had been to destroy the whole tower,” according to the Times. Residents denied that Hamas had been working out of the building. Residents said they received an alert from Israel 20 to 30 minutes before a drone dropped a “warning” rocket on their home. A warplane filled with non-warning weapons arrived shortly after. Text messages, voice mails, and leaflets distributed by Israel also warned that it would target anything “from which terror activities against Israel originate.”

Israel hit several other targets in Gaza over the weekend, including two homes and a commercial center. Ten Palestinians were reportedly killed in those attacks.

Netanyahu is now preparing his public for a war that continues into next month. A new ceasefire proposal may be in the offing, though that won’t be much comfort to the 106 Palestinians or the four-year-old Israeli child killed in the exchange of fire since the previous truce broke down last Tuesday:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday Israel would not be worn down by persistent rocket fire, warning it would hit any place from which militants were firing, including homes. His remarks came as the air force stepped up its campaign against rocket fire, bombarding a 12-storey residential block. But by early Monday, there was increasing talk about a possible new ceasefire agreement which would see the delegations return to Cairo to resume discussions on an Egyptian proposal to broker a more permanent end to the violence.

“There is an idea for a temporary ceasefire that opens the crossings, allows aid and reconstruction material, and the disputed points will be discussed in a month,” a senior Palestinian official said in Cairo. “We would be willing to accept this, but are waiting for the Israeli response to this proposal,” he said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations. Another Palestinian official said Egypt might invite Palestinian and Israeli negotiating teams to return to Cairo within 48 hours.

Meanwhile, a new poll of Gazans has come out that illuminates the attitudes of the people who, in Israel’s view, abdicated their status as noncombatants when they voted for Hamas:

More than 90 percent of Gazans surveyed thought that resistance was either “well prepared” or “somewhat prepared” for the Israeli assault, and more than 93 percent opposed the disarmament of Palestinian militant groups, which Israel has said is a condition of any long-term truce. At the same time, despite an Israeli assault that has killed more than 2,100 Palestinians — overwhelmingly civilians — in the last six weeks, nearly 88 percent of those surveyed also supported a long-term truce, and another 10 percent supported an unspecified “medium-term” truce. …

The poll also surveyed opinions in Gaza regarding the Syria-based Wahhabi militant group Islamic State, previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which Israeli leaders have repeatedly referenced in their offensive against Hamas. More than 85 percent of Gazans surveyed, however, said they oppose the group.

That last finding is particularly salient in light of the new propaganda meme Netanyahu has been pushing:

Max Fisher takes down that facile comparison:

The two groups are totally distinct. It’s not just that there is no known connection, operational or otherwise, between Hamas and ISIS, although there isn’t. They ultimately follow very different ideologies: Hamas will talk about Islamist extremism, but it is ultimately a Palestinian nationalist group first and foremost, one that is fighting to establish its vision of a Palestinian state. One of Hamas’s most important supporters historically has been the government of Iran, which is actively fighting against ISIS in Syria, where it has been sending arms, money, and men. If Hamas and ISIS were really the same thing, then presumably Iran would not fund one half of the group and then send Iranians to die fighting the other half. And Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal publicly rejected any Hamas-ISIS comparison.

ISIS, on the other hand, comes from the same ideological strain as al-Qaeda, a jihadist movement called Salafism, which rejects the idea of nationalism and seeks a pan-Islamic caliphate. Even within Gaza, the Palestinian territory that Hamas rules, there is sometimes-violent tension between Hamas and the local Salafist groups that follow something more akin to the ISIS worldview.

Unmasking “Jihadi John”

by Jonah Shepp

The UK intelligence agencies claim to have identified the ISIS militant who murdered American journalist James Foley in a video released last week:

According to The Times of London and other sources, “John” is believed to be Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, a 23-year-old man from London, who went to Syria to join Islamist forces last year. His father, Adel Abdel Bary, is an Egyptian-born man who is accused of taking part in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. He was extradited from the U.K. to the U.S. in 2012 and is currently awaiting trial. Bary was an aspiring hip-hop artist who performed under the name L Jinny when he still lived in London. His music has even been played on BBC Radio and there are several YouTube videos of his performances online. It’s believed those videos could have been used to match Bary’s voice to the voice of the man in the video of Foley’s beheading.

As Gary Sick put it in an interview the Dish referred to on Friday, “eventually … justice does catch up with these guys”. If Abdel Bary is indeed the man behind the mask, we hope this is the first step toward bringing him to justice.

Now seems like a good time for this small programming note: The Dish has tried to avoid referring to Foley’s murder as an “execution” or to his killer as an “executioner”, because these terms confer some degree of legitimacy on the act. An execution, properly understood, means the killing of an individual by a state within the confines of its laws. This killing clearly violated Iraqi, American, Islamic, and international law, to say nothing of human decency, and construing it as an execution gives the thugs who carried it out too much credit. As for its perpetrator, he is no dispenser of justice, but rather a depraved criminal who killed a man and made a snuff film.

Let’s never lose sight of the fact that these scumbags are criminals, not warriors. And justice can’t catch up with them soon enough.