Category: The Dish

by Jonah Shepp

Analyzing Russia’s most recent announcement that it will withdraw troops from the Ukrainian border, Linda Kinstler stresses that, even if it’s true, the Ukrainians are still sitting ducks:

[I]f Russian troops do retreat to their “usual garrisons,” plenty of Russian forces will still be well within striking distance of Ukraine. There are multiple Russian bases along the Ukrainian border, so for troops to move back to their permanent stations might not mean all that much as far as de-escalation goes. “It seems that [Putin’s] agents are having more problems [in eastern Ukraine] than they bargained for, and he is now perhaps looking to minimize his overexposure,” said Stephen Blank, senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council. “But the fact of the matter is they could withdraw five miles and then they could come right back.” Russian forces, Finch says, “are not that far from the Ukrainian border to begin with. For them to turn around wouldn’t be that big of a move.”

Even more dangerous, as Ukraine discovered in Crimea, was the presence of Russian soldiers on their soil. Dmitry Gorenburg draws lessons from that experience:

First of all, having Russian bases on the territory of one’s state makes an invasion much easier to carry out. Russian naval bases in Crimea were used as a beachhead for covertly moving Russian forces into Ukraine. Since the number of troops actually based in Crimea was significantly lower than the maximum of 25,000 agreed to between Russia and Ukraine in the 1997 treaty that regulated the status of the Black Sea Fleet, Russia could even claim that the increase in the number of Russian troops in Crimea did not violate the relevant treaty.* This precedent should be a concern to Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, and other states with Russian troops stationed on their territory.

Second, former Soviet states need to watch out for Russian agents and collaborators working in their security and military forces. One of the reasons for the ineffectiveness of Ukraine’s military and security response in Crimea and subsequent covert activities in the country’s east is that that Ukraine’s secure communications channels are almost certainly compromised by Russian agents. Most other former Soviet states most likely have similar problems, though perhaps not to the same extent.

Meanwhile, Sarah Chayes examines how corruption left Ukraine militarily unprepared for Russian aggression:

Chronic underfunding “enhanced the role of the human factor” in choosing among operational priorities. Ostensibly outdated equipment was sold “at unreasonably understated prices” in return for kickbacks. Officers even auctioned off defense ministry land. Gradually, Kyiv began requiring the military to cover more of its own costs, forcing senior officers into business, “which is…inconsistent with the armed forces’ mission,” and opened multiple avenues for corruption. Commanders took to “using military equipment, infrastructure, and…personnel [to] build private houses, [or] make repairs in their apartments.” Procurement fraud was rife, as were bribes to get into and through military academies, and for desirable assignments.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian factories kept on turning out high-quality materiel that was exported for cash to China, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Russia. The results have been on display for the past two months: helicopters and armored vehicles immobile for lack of fuel or missing parts; soldiers in Crimea turning in their uniforms for promises of a Russian salary five times the paltry $200 per month Ukraine was paying. Ordinary citizens donating some $2 million to the defense budget by texting 565 on their mobile phones.

Previous Dish on Ukraine’s strategic vulnerability here.

by Patrick Appel

Andrea Thompson summarizes the bad news:

Greenland’s glaciers are more vulnerable to melting by warm ocean waters than previously thought, a new study of the topography of the bedrock under the ice finds. This clearer picture of the underpinnings of the miles-thick ice sheet, along with other recent studies that suggest parts of Earth’s polar regions are not as stable as once thought, could mean that current projections of future sea level rise are too low.

The new Greenland findings, detailed online May 18 in the journal Nature Geoscience, come on the heels of an announcement by the same group of researchers at the University of California, Irvine, that some of the largest and fastest-moving glaciers of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet have entered a phase of “unstoppable” collapse.

What this means:

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet alone contains enough ice to add another 10 to 13 feet of sea level rise, and the Greenland Ice Sheet contains enough to contribute another 20 feet.

Ryan Avent uses the new findings to discuss how “to calculate the present value of future benefits from reduced emissions today”:

Unfortunately, peeling apart how people actually discount benefits centuries or more in the future is very hard. But a fascinating new NBER working paper uses a clever approach to take a crack at it.

The authors exploit an oddity in British real estate: Britons buying a home may either purchase what is known as a freehold (which means they own the land outright) or a leasehold (which means they “own” it for the duration of the leasehold). But leaseholds aren’t like your standard rental contract; they often grant ownership for periods between 80 and 999 years. The authors reckon that by finding the premium paid for freeholds relative to super-long-dated leaseholds on otherwise identical properties, they can come up with an estimate of how distant benefits are actually valued in the market.

Remarkably, they find that people pay a premium of 10%-15% less for 100-year leaseholds and 5%-8% less for leaseholds of between 125-150 years. Only for leaseholds of 700 years or more do they detect no difference in price. On the whole, they reckon, a discount rate of about 2.6% appears to apply out well beyond a century. Oddly enough, people are willing to part with real money now in exchange for benefit flows accruing well beyond any reasonable expected lifespan.

That won’t make it any easier to generate the political support for meaningful action to slow climate change. But it does make it harder to justify delay based on the fact that people simply don’t care much about the distant future.

by Jonah Shepp

Scientists gave a rabbit a tiny, wireless pacemaker:

A rabbit’s beating heart has been regulated using a tiny pacemaker that beams in energy from outside its body. It is the first time this kind of wireless energy transfer has been demonstrated in a living animal. If such wirelessly powered medical implants can work in people too, it would reduce the seriousness of the procedures required to get them fitted.

“Our device is small, so it will be much easier to deliver into the body,” says Ada Poon of Stanford University in California, who led the team that implanted the tiny pacemaker. Being fitted with a pacemaker currently requires surgery plus another operation when the battery eventually runs down. So Poon and her colleagues outfitted a rabbit with a pacemaker that has no battery and is just 3 millimetres long.

Olivia Solon explains how it works:

The system works on the principle that waves travel in different ways when they come into contact with different materials.

This is highlighted by the fact that you can hear the vibration of train wheels if you put your ear to the railway track much earlier than you would hear the train with your ears. It involves using a flat, credit card-sized power source positioned outside of the body over the device that can interact with the body’s tissue to induce propagating waves that converge on a micro-device implanted in the body.

The 2mm-long microdevice consists of a power harvesting coil, integrated circuits, electrodes and fixation structures. Such devices can be used as “electroceuticals” to strategically stimulate or silence nerves to treat a range of conditions including Parkinson’s, depression and chronic pain. The same devices could also be used to strategically deliver drugs or monitor vital functions deep inside the body. Power could either be delivered directly from outside of the body or the power could be sent to periodically recharge small, embedded batteries.

Cassandra Khaw looks at where this development could lead:

Poon believes that her work could lead to programmable microimplants like sensors that monitor vital functions, electrostimulators that alter neural signals in the brain, and drug delivery systems that apply medicine directly where needed. All without the bulk of batteries and recharging systems required today. Her endeavours could also help expedite the development of medical treatments that utilize electronics instead of drugs. Stanford Neurosciences Institute director William Newsome said that “the Poon lab has solved a significant piece of the puzzle for safely powering implantable microdevices.” So far, the wireless charging system has been tested in a pig and also used to power a pacemaker in a rabbit. The next step is human trials. Should those prove successful, it will likely take a few years before the system is authorized for commercial usage.

by Jessie Roberts

Support is building for “trigger warnings” on works of literature that address sensitive topics like rape or war (NYT):

Colleges across the country this spring have been wrestling with student requests for what are known as “trigger warnings,” explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans. The warnings, which have their ideological roots in feminist thought, have gained the most traction at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where the student government formally called for them.

Drum fails to see the endgame here:

I’m not especially sympathetic to the trigger warning movement, which seems more appropriate for explicitly safe spaces (counseling groups, internet forums, etc.) than for public venues like university campuses. But put that aside. What I don’t get is what anyone thinks the point of this is. You’re never going to have trigger warnings in ordinary life, right? So even if universities started adopting broad trigger policies, it would accomplish nothing except to semi-protect sensitive students for a few more years of their lives, instead of teaching them how to deal with upsetting material.

Lowry scoffs:

The problem with the trigger warning as conceived by its most fervent supporters is its presumption that people can be harmed by works of literature; that every student is a victim of something and on the verge of breaking down; and that ultimately students have to be protected from anything departing from their comfort zones.

It is profoundly infantilizing. If someone can’t read Crime and Punishment (warning: includes scenes of near-madness, violence, sexual exploitation, cruelty to animals, and smoking) or Hamlet (warning: includes poisoning, drowning, stabbing, and intense intra-familial conflict) without fear of being offended, he or she should major in accounting.

Jason Diamond suggests the critics are being too callous:

[N]o matter how silly you might judge a trigger warning on a copy of The Great Gatsby to be, the mocking tone comes off as victim-shaming, whether it’s intentional or not. Of course, it takes two to tango, and the pro-trigger warning side, in some cases, could do a better job presenting its arguments. The Oberlin College draft guide mentioned in the Times piece, which asked professors to put trigger warnings in their syllabi, doesn’t make it clear how trigger warnings from the left are different from the right’s book-banning. …

At the end of the day, it’s up to the individual to figure out what’s best for them, and we are better if we support them when they need it — but, perhaps, attend to individual readers’ needs rather than make assumptions about what will upset certain groups. At the very least, we need to have more serious conversations about not just trigger warnings, but the causes behind them. And we should strive to make those conversations as compassionate as possible.

Mary Elizabeth Williams argues that over-using the phrase “trigger warning” has diminished its meaning:

[I]t’s thrown around so much it easily becomes pointless and infantilizing. So explain what you’re teaching. Justify it. Have conversations and ask questions and set a tone that inspires complex thought. Be sensitive and respectful. Just take more than two words to do it. Don’t define a work solely by its most dramatic and upsetting elements, removing its context and giving it an automatically negative taint, because it’s hard to approach a work with an open heart and mind when the most important thing you know about it going in is that it’s going to be “triggering.”

Ari Kohen is on the same page:

[I]n my human rights courses, I’ve often told students that I’ve assigned something that might be upsetting to them, that they should be aware of the content before they begin, and that I’m available to speak with them about the topic at any time. … Reading about torture, genocide, or sexual violence can be deeply disturbing — and not only to people who have experienced these abuses; it’s important to let students know what awaits them in the week’s reading so they can prepare themselves both emotionally and intellectually for the challenge. Not surprisingly, I’ve found that discussions on these challenging topics are more thoughtful when students were warned that their reading might be emotionally taxing.

Another idea:

[G]enerate the warnings and make them available on request and online. Make them easy to find for anyone who needs them — but underplay them. I think it’s good that people with nut allergies can find allergan notices by reading side-panel labels on packaged foods. I think it’s also good when the rest of us find them easy to ignore. That’s the right balance.

Previous Dish on trigger warnings here.