Author: Andrew Sullivan

Readers continue the popular thread:

I remember the moment I knew for a fact that Santa wasn’t real. All my life, Santa used different wrapping paper than my mom. Gifts from my parents were in one style and Santa’s gifts looked completely different. One July, when I was 11 or 12, I was helping my mom clean out the garage and I came across Santa’s wrapping paper. I was old enough that I had a good idea that Santa wasn’t real, but I remember the look my mom and I exchanged. Mom said, “Well, that’s that. Don’t tell your little sister.” And I didn’t.

The next Christmas, when Santa used the special paper again, I felt like I was in on some big secret. I knew the truth! My sister figured it out logically a year later. She was 8. I am clearly the slow one of the family.

Another’s reason for disbelief was pretty simple:

Santa had the same handwriting as my parents.

Another reader:

I had been suspecting Santa was a myth for a few years, but when I was 10 I cornered my dad because he somehow couldn’t lie to me when asked a straight question. (As an 8 year old who had just finished D.A.R.E., I caught him burning incense and smoking, I thought, a cigarette. Being the smart ass I was, I asked, “are you smoking marijuana?” His answer was, “Yes, don’t tell your mother.” I didn’t.)

I asked him if Santa was real, and he told me no – it was him and my mom. To this day he says my face dropped, my heart broke, and that he’s always regretted telling me. I remember it differently. I remember being glad he told me the honest truth and didn’t keep lying to me like all the other adults. Of course I WANTED Santa to be real, I still do! That’d be awesome! But I had already found their stash of presents and he was just confirming what I already knew.

Another confesses:

I should probably keep this to myself, but what the Hell:

I held on to a belief in Santa until an embarrassingly late age. I may have been as old as 12, certainly over 10, but either way much too old to still be believing in Santa. I don’t recall arguing with other kids who told me the truth, just an iron-clad confidence they were wrong. Besides, I remain to this day much too gullible and trusting.

I was in the kitchen with my mother when my oldest sister, who was six years older than me, walked into the kitchen and asked my mother for help writing a paper for school about the reaction children have upon learning that Santa is not real. I was stunned and crestfallen. I responded with “you could just watch me” or something to that effect and left the room.

I wasn’t angry at my parents or siblings for allowing me to continue to hold onto such a childish belief. I was more embarrassed that I had allowed myself to believe in such a ridiculous idea for so long. The Santa concept falls apart even under mild questioning that it was deflating to think I had never pressed it.

Another can relate:

I love this thread, please keep it up! Like several others have mentioned, I also believed in Santa for a longer time than I probably should have. I, too, hung on due to some clever lies from my parents and my certainty of their own human nature.

My first picture with Santa from my first Christmas was actually my dad in a Santa suit.  I of course didn’t know that at the time, and I guess when “Santa” was holding me, being an 8 month old, I grabbed his beard and PULLED.  Out came a tuft of rental Santa beard fluff, and my parents saved it in one of those hinging jewelry boxes.

When I started to doubt Santa at an early age due to some school kids who brought me to tears by telling the truth, my parents pulled out my picture with Santa and the beard fluff as proof of his existence.  That’s all I needed to defend Santa for years: “I have a piece of his beard!” (By the way, Andrew, to this day I have profound respect for beards and love that my husband has one.)

Another reader:

I found out when I was eight. I don’t recall exactly what tipped me off, probably the logistical impossibility of visiting so many kids on a single night. Whatever my reasoning, I confronted my mother with my suspicions and, after some hemming and hawing about it, she finally admitted the truth. Far from being disappointed, I was indignant that I had been lied to, not only by my parents but every other adult, as well. This was an injustice that had to be remedied.

So the next day at school, my teacher started saying something about Santa. I raised my hand, and proudly informed everyone in my third grade class what I had learned. I honestly thought (1) they would be happy to learn the truth and (2) they would be as upset with adults as I was. This is not what happened.

Every single kid in my class, including my best friend, Jimmy, was outraged, all right, but not with our teacher, their parents, and every other lying adult, but with me. Pretty much everyone in class started yelling at once, saying I was wrong, stupid, etc. I had to be sent out of the room so the teacher could placate my classmates, probably by telling them I was a kook and of course Santa is real.

I was flabbergasted. I thought I would be hailed as a hero for uncovering the sordid truth, but instead I was a pariah. No one played with me at recess that day, nor for a number of days thereafter. Jimmy and I finally reconciled after I made some mealy-mouthed concession about how I was wrong and there really was a Santa Claus. Everyone else eventually forgot about it after Christmas passed, but I never did. Third grade was a long time ago, but I can still see the hateful looks on their little faces after I spouted off about Santa.

I can’t say this changed my life or anything, but it was a pretty damn good lesson about human nature, though it took me a few years to fully absorb that. But now that I have kids of my own, I’m all in on filling their heads full of Santa nonsense. So clearly I didn’t learn that lesson.

Another confronted another kind of spite:

Back in the early 1950s, I was in kindergarten and a neighbor girl who was a couple of years older offered to help me write to Santa.  We were upstairs in my house, both writing our letters, and she misspelled “from” as “form”.  Even then I was a stickler for accuracy, so I informed her that she had misspelled it.  Probably irked at being corrected by a younger child, she snapped back, “So what!  There’s no Santa Claus anyway – it’s your parents.”

I rushed downstairs to check with my mother, but as soon as I heard my neighbor’s words, I knew they were true.  My mom’s face (probably a long time before she thought she would have to confront this question) just confirmed it.

Another reader ends on a brighter note:

My sister did it the best way. Her son was simply not disbelieving despite being like 10 years old – way too old to still believe in Santa. So last Christmas Eve, she woke him up at 2am and told him: “I have something to tell you. Me and your Dad are Santa Claus. He’s not real. But we have exciting news! Now, YOU get to be Santa for your little sister.”

And my nephew has kept that secret now. And he relishes his role as his sister’s secret-keeper.

Beth Daley recently reported on prenatal screening errors:

Two recent industry-funded studies show that test results indicating a fetus is at high risk for a chromosomal condition can be a false alarm half of the time. And the rate of false alarms goes up the more rare the condition, such as Trisomy 13, which almost always causes death. Companies selling the most popular of these screens do not make it clear enough to patients and doctors that the results of their tests are not reliable enough to make a diagnosis. …

Now, evidence is building that some women are terminating pregnancies based on the screening tests alone. A recent study by another California-based testing company, Natera Inc., which offers a screen called Panorama, found that 6.2 percent of women who received test results showing their fetus at high risk for a chromosomal condition terminated pregnancies without getting a diagnostic test such as an amniocentesis.

Libby Copeland summarizes Daley’s findings:

The problem with the new class of prenatal screenings, which look at placental DNA in the mother’s bloodstream, is that these companies’ tests are not regulated by the FDA due to a loophole that dates back to the 1970s, Daley writes. So there’s no one evaluating their claims of accuracy. Many doctors appear not to understand how predictive the tests they’re giving are, since they often get information about a test’s purported accuracy from the salespeople selling them the tests.

Genetic counselors should be stepping in to explain the tests’ limitations to patients, Daley writes, but that’s not always happening. She points to an apparently smaller but growing group of women who gave birth to severely ill babies—some of whom died within days—after screens showed their fetuses at minimal risk. (In a separate story, she outlines one of these stories, and another about a healthy baby born after a prenatal screen predicted, supposedly with 97 percent accuracy, that he would be born with a fatal chromosomal disorder.)

The companies that make these tests say they’re studying the false positive rate, but they’re also poised to push back on the FDA’s looming efforts to regulate them. For now, the industry is policing itself, which doesn’t seem to be working out so well for a number of American women.

However, Emily Oster defends the tests as “a huge leap in accuracy over what was previously available”:

The problem may not lie in the claims made by the companies who make the tests, but in the interpretation of these results by doctors and patients. The earlier versions of the screening tests were so inaccurate that no one would think of acting on their results by terminating a pregnancy. The enhanced accuracy here may, perversely, encourage acting on this information when it is still not certain. But that problem can’t be fixed by the test manufacturers; it requires greater statistical literacy among doctors and patients.

Earlier this month, 26 men were arrested at a Cairo bath house. Scott Long attended the first day of their trial:

The lawyers still hadn’t seen the prosecutors’ or police reports, so we don’t know definitely what the charges are. It seems likely, though, that 21 men were customers at the bathhouse; they will be charged with the “habitual practice of debauchery” (article 9c of Law 10/1061), or homosexual conduct, facing up to three years in prison. The owner and staff probably make up the other five prisoners. They’re likely to be tried for some combination of:

• keeping a residence for purposes of debauchery (article 9a, three years),
• or facilitating the practice of debauchery (article 9b, three years),
• or profiting from the practice of debauchery (article 11, two years),
• or “working or residing in premises used for debauchery” (article 13: one year).

That could add up nine years in prison. Contrary to [Egyptian journalist] Mona Iraqi’s lies, there was no mention of “sex trafficking.”

Shortly after the arrests, Brian Whitaker compared this latest incident with “a similar crackdown by the Mubarak regime around 2001”:

The exact reasons for the 2001 crackdown are still debated, and probably several factors were involved. Writing about this at the time, Hossam Bahgat saw it as an attempt by the Mubarak regime to undercut Islamist opposition by portraying the state as the guardian of public virtue: “To counter this ascending [Islamist] power, the state resorts to sensational prosecutions, in which the regime steps in to protect Islam from evil apostates. The regime seems to have realised that suppression and persecution of Islamists will not uproot the Islamist threat unless it is combined with actions that bolster the state’s religious legitimacy.”

He also noted the regime’s practice of using sensational trials to divert public attention from the worsening state of the economy and similar issues.

Ursula Lindsey doubts President Sisi and his underlings are trying to “bolster their religious credentials”:

There are other explanations. First of all, the mercenary ones. What happened to the wallets and cell phones of the men arrested in the raid on the bathhouse? I would bet you they never saw them again. What does a cafe or bar in Downtown Cairo have to pay in bribes to operate freely, to take over the sidewalk, to have the noise complaints of neighbors ignored, let alone to keep a liquor license? Businesses that exist on the edge of social approval are easy pickings for extortion.

Furthermore, the way I see it, in the summer of 2013 a terrible mechanism was put into motion. In this mechanism, the media generates hysteria, and the security sector produces repression. This mechanism now continues to run, although its primary target — taking the Muslim Brotherhood out power, putting the military into it, and undermining the aspirations of January 25 2011 — has been accomplished. But journalists still have to report about something, and the country’s economic problems, human rights abuses, and the conduct of its war on terrorism are all out of bounds.

New York’s ban was announced last week:

At a cabinet meeting Wednesday morning, acting state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker released the results of a years-long study into the public health implications of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Zucker said the benefits of tapping natural gas deposits in western New York did not outweigh the potential risk to public health.

Jay Michaelson reads through that report:

[T]he shortest summary of A Public Health Review of High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing for Shale Gas Development (PDF) is: We don’t know if it’s safe or not.

As the title implies, the New York report is not a study, but a review of existing studies—dozens of them, from around the country—as well as conversations with officials in other states who are also studying the issue. In addition to the tens of detailed studies, the report identifies 13 comprehensive, systematic ones that might settle the matter once and for all. “These major study initiatives may eventually reduce uncertainties regarding health impacts of HVHF [fracking] and could contribute to a much more complete knowledge base for managing HVHF risks,” the report says. “However, it will be years before most of these major initiatives are completed”

Sigh. Even the most eagerly anticipated study, the EPA’s analysis of fracking’s potential effects on drinking water, begun in 2011, is not due to be complete until 2016.

Chris Mooney compares New York’s actions to those of Maryland, which recently approved fracking. He concludes that the biggest difference “may be that unlike Maryland’s research, the New York health report pretty clearly hews to an approach known as the ‘precautionary principle‘”:

It is important to recognize that the precautionary principle is not a purely scientific position — nor is it an anti-scientific one. Rather, it represents a risk-aversive orientation towards scientific uncertainty — a conscious decision that unknown risks are too serious to ignore.

That’s why criticisms of New York’s move on “scientific grounds” don’t make much sense. For instance, one blog post at the pro-fracking site Energy in Depth sought to individually critique some of the health-related studies that fed into the New York report. But that’s kind of missing the point: These studies don’t need to be the unassailable “truth” in order for New York to justify its precautionary position. Rather, the state simply needs to be able to point to a body of evidence that, on the whole, raises concern.

Ronald Bailey rejects this reasoning:

A simpler formulation of the precautionary principle is: Never do anything for the first time. Basically, ignorance can be used as an excuse to stop anything of which one disapproves.

Bloomberg View’s editors also argue that “answer isn’t to ban fracking”:

It’s to regulate it more carefully and intelligently. Stronger casing requirements for wells, for example, can prevent wastewater from escaping into the ground, and there must be strict rules about how to dispose of the wastewater that reaches the surface. Companies that don’t follow the rules should face meaningful fines.

These principles haven’t always been applied in other states that allow fracking, which is why the practice has a mixed reputation. If Cuomo believes that current best practices in other states aren’t sufficient to protect public health, he would do more good by issuing rules that are — and then challenging drillers to meet them.

Sean Collins points out that that the “areas of New York with the most potential for fracking, such as those in the ‘southern tier’, are also among the most economically depressed regions in the entire United States”:

The question of moving forward with fracking, as with other forms of industrial development, is not simply a technical, scientific one. People’s livelihoods and prosperity are at stake, and the science doesn’t tell us what value we should place on lifting people out of poverty. The decision to ban fracking in upstate New York is based on flimsy ‘it’s possible something bad could happen’ grounds, at a time when such drilling is being deployed successfully and safely elsewhere. The decision was made in the context of grinding poverty and over the heads of the local people who want it.

But Philip Bump found that even regions which might benefit economically from fracking were divided:

The Finger Lakes region, a bit further north, depends heavily on tourism. In 2012, I spoke with the Chamber of Commerce in Penn Yan, N.Y., at the tip of Keuka Lake, to gauge how the business community felt about the possibility of fracking. A representative said they were split: businesses that depended on tourism were worried about pollution in the lake, other businesses supported the possibility of job growth (which is very real; three cities in North Dakota were among the fastest-growing in the country in 2013, thanks to the boom in the Bakken shale formation in that state).

That was 2012. Over the past year, unemployment rates in the state have fallen, just as they have broadly across the country. Where the Finger Lakes were peppered with pro- and anti-fracking signs two years ago, this year, the signs dealt more often with Cuomo’s also-contentious gun control bill. While a lot of people upstate are still out of work, the urgency has faded a bit.