The Other NFL Abuse Scandal, Ctd

A reader lends his expertise to the Adrian Peterson case:

I am a psychologist who works primarily with very young children and their families. It is disturbing to me, especially reading the comments sections of sites that are covering this story, to see how few people seem to have gotten the memo about the impact of early violence on the developing brain. While Mr. Peterson’s son was being whipped, and for some long time thereafter, his nervous system was being flooded with stress hormones (cortisol is the primary culprit). Shame, anger, and fear states cause the body to respond this way, as stress hormones can also help mobilize us into fight or flight states when danger is near. The problem is that sustained, repeated exposure to these hormones causes structural changes to the developing brain, including the hippocampus and the amygdala – structures that are responsible for emotion processing and memory.

The result? A nervous system that is “primed” to scan for danger and ready to fight to protect itself rather than one that can safely engage in play, exploration and learning (these brain states are incompatible). Research is very clear that kids who are exposed to this kind of violence (fear states) are much more likely to be violent as they grow up.

So you want to have fewer future Ray Rices clocking their partners? Figure out ways to keep kids like Adrian Peterson’s safe.

Meanwhile, Margaret Hartmann flags yet another story of an NFL player in trouble for domestic violence:

Police tell the Arizona Republic that the incidents [involving Arizona Cardinals running back Jonathan Dwyer] took place over two days in late July but were not reported until September 11. … Dwyer was booked on suspicion of aggravated assault against his wife for fracturing a bone and aggravated assault against his child for throwing the shoe. He could also be charged with preventing a 911 call and damaging property. Dwyer’s wife and child left the state shortly after the incidents. He admitted that they were arguing, but denied that any physical abuse took place.

Doktor Zoom of Wonkette notes:

Dwyer is actually the Cardinals’ second player with a domestic violence charge: Linebacker Daryl Washington pleaded guilty in March to assaulting his girlfriend, but he was already indefinitely suspended from the team for an earlier substance-abuse violation. No NFL discipline for him on the domestic assault charge yet.

Meanwhile, Rich Lowry defends the NFL from all the bad publicity lately:

[T]he media has lost its collective mind. It’s as if the people who controlled CNN’s programming in the aftermath of the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 have been put in charge of all press coverage of the NFL, and brought to the task the same sense of proportion, good taste and dignity that characterized the network’s handling of the missing plane. The coverage of the Rice elevator video managed to combine moralistic preening with voyeuristic pandering. Everyone on TV professed to be so outraged by domestic violence that they had to show a clip of a woman getting viciously punched, over and over again (until many of the networks finally recoiled from their own overkill).

Read all of the recent Dish on domestic violence here.

Scotland Stays

The results from yesterday’s voting:

Scotland Voting

Alex Massie, a Scot in favor of union, reflects:

[A] 55-45 victory is both a handsome margin – wider than the 53-47 I had guessed – and a remarkable repudiation of the Union. It is clear enough to be decisive; close enough to demand modesty in victory.

He is heartened by “the rediscovery that, actually, Britain was something – a place and an idea too – that was worth fighting for.” But Massie also faces uncomfortable facts:

The Union was saved, in the main, by wealthier and older Scots. The poor chose differently. That’s an uncomfortable fact for Unionists and one that requires attention. Plenty of Yes votes were cast in hope more than expectation; many others were votes predicated on the fear that voting No offered no prospect of personal or community improvement.

One lesson of this campaign is that the poor, so often marginalised, have a voice too and that they should be heard. This too, I think, should temper Unionist joy this morning. A sobering, timely, even necessary, reminder that the status quo does not float all boats.

Isabel Hardman looks at Scottish voters’ reasons for voting one way or the other:

[T]he reason more frequently cited for voting ‘Yes’ than any other was ‘disaffection with Westminster politics’, with 74% of those in favour of independence naming that, then 54 per cent also picking the NHS, followed by 33 naming tax and public spending. For No voters, the biggest issue was the pound, which does vindicate Alistair Darling rather for banging on about currency union, even when some in his own camp thought he needed a change of tack. 37 per cent cited pensions, followed by 36 who named the NHS as a reason for voting ‘No’. Similarly, 47 per cent of No voters said the most important reason for voting no was that ‘the risks of becoming independent looked too great when it came to things like the currency, EU membership, the economy, jobs and prices.

But Jason Cowley predicts that “unless there is far-reaching constitutional reform, there will be a second Scottish independence referendum before too long”:

What the referendum campaign demonstrated was that, in the right circumstances and when people believe that something truly significant is at stake and that their vote matters, they care passionately. At a time when fewer and fewer of us are members of political parties, nearly 4.3 million registered to vote, 97 per cent of those eligible. Overall turnout was 86 per cent, testament to a nation’s engagement and a direct challenge to a broken political system.

But how now to capture and harness the energies that were unleashed during a referendum campaign in Scotland that shook the foundations of the British state, stunned a complacent elite and came so close to shattering the 307-year-old Union?

ISIS’s War Games

Murtaza Hussain introduces the jihadists’ latest propaganda innovation, which looks to court fans of the Grand Theft Auto video game series:

A new video purportedly released by supporters of the group to Arabic language news media appears to show Islamic State, or ISIS, propaganda mocked up in the style of the popular “Grand Theft Auto” franchise. The video shows footage of explosions, sniper rifle attacks and drive-by shootings all rendered in the style of the GTA series. Arabic commentary included as subtitles contain quotes along the lines of targeting U.S. forces and “the Safavid Army”, a reference to Iranian or pro-Iranian forces. They also show images of an assault rifle riddling a police car full of bullet holes — a scene that would not be altogether unfamiliar to Grand Theft Auto players. …

Though the new video appears to constitute a trailer, there’s no indication yet that a real, playable game is in the offing anytime soon. Nonetheless, coupled with the group’s release yesterday of a new propaganda trailer directed at the United States, it appears that the ISIS media war is continuing to evolve in new and weird directions.

But the viewer is clearly meant to understand that the “real, playable game” is available only in Iraq and Syria. At least, that’s what Jay Caspian Kang suspects:

The similarities between ISIS recruitment films and first-person-shooter games are likely intentional. Back in June, an ISIS fighter told the BBC that his new life was “better than that game Call of Duty.” Video-game-themed memes traced back to ISIS have been floating around the Internet for months, including one that reads, “THIS IS OUR CALL OF DUTY AND WE RESPAWN IN JANNAH.” (“Respawn” is the gamer word for reincarnate.) Another ISIS video, as the Intercept notes, looks like a deliberate homage to Grand Theft Auto. Audio clips that sound much like ones in Call of Duty have been spliced into other ISIS videos. Many of the ISIS recruitment videos are dedicated to showcasing rocket launchers, mines, and assault rifles, as if to say, “If you join us, you’ll get to shoot these things.” …

In their recruitment of Western jihadis, ISIS has used a broad, pop-culture-laden campaign that seems to be aimed at turning what once might have been a radical religious message into something more worldly. During the World Cup, an ISIS Twitter account posted an image of a decapitated head with the message “This is our football, it’s made of skin #WorldCup.” That ISIS would try to access Western kids through such avenues speaks to a deep cynicism that discards the religious and the political for adrenaline and gore.

Hailing The Space Taxi

This week, NASA announced that it would award a combined $6.8 billion “space taxi” contract to Boeing and Elon Musk’s SpaceX:

Essentially, Boeing’s CST-100 Space Capsule and SpaceX’s Dragon will each send a test flight to the International Space Station to demonstrate their space taxi capabilities. Each team will fly to the ISS with a NASA crew member and cargo, show that they can dock to the station, and return to Earth safely. Astronauts could be taking a ride on the space taxi pilot program as soon as 2017.

Christian Davenport explains what makes the move so significant:

The announcement of the “commercial crew” awards is a big step toward allowing the U.S. to end its reliance on Russia, which has been ferrying American astronauts to the space station since the retirement of the space shuttle three years ago. The arrangement hasn’t been cheap: the Russians currently charge $71 million per seat, and NASA has in a single year sent more than $400 million to Russia for these taxi rides. If the schedule doesn’t slip, and Boeing and SpaceX prove their vehicles are safe, NASA should see its astronauts launched on U.S. soil with American rockets by as early as 2017.

The awards represent a significant shift for NASA, which has long owned and operated its own rockets. Instead of going to space on government-owned vehicles, NASA’s astronauts would essentially rent space on ships provided by Boeing and SpaceX.

Meanwhile, Adam Minter praises the way NASA put the project together:

NASA’s decision to fund a competition — known as Commercial Crew– to develop rockets for manned space flights has been one of the agency’s biggest successes in decades. Just three years ago, upon the retirement of the Space Shuttle, NASA didn’t have any way to transport U.S. astronauts other than by hitching expensive rides on Russian spacecraft. Today the agency was able to choose between three viable spacecraft designs, all of which will be ready to fly in 2017, according to their manufacturers. The three were developed for less than $2 billion cumulatively. It’s been a welcome change from NASA’s history of program delays, cost-overruns, all-too-cozy contractor relationships and missions driven by patronage.

Animals Can Be Useless, And That’s OK

Richard Conniff rejects conservationist arguments that imply “animals matter only because they benefit humans, or because just possibly, at some unknowable point in the future, they might benefit humans”:

I understand the logic, or at least the desperation, that drives conservationists to this horrible idea. It may seem like the only way to keep what’s left of the natural world from being plowed under by unstoppable human expansion and by our insatiable appetite for what appears to be useful.

But usefulness is precisely the argument other people put forward to justify destroying or displacing wildlife, and they generally bring a larger and more persuasive kind of green to the argument. Nothing you can say about 100 acres in the New Jersey Meadowlands will ever add up for a politician who thinks a new shopping mall will mean more jobs for local voters (and contributions to his campaign war chest). Nothing you can say about the value of rhinos for ecotourism in South Africa will ever matter to a wildlife trafficker who can sell their horns for $30,000 a pound in Vietnam.

Finally, there is the unavoidable problem that most wildlife species – honey badgers, blobfish, blue-footed boobies, red-tailed hawks, monarch butterflies, hellbenders – are always going to be “useless,” or occasionally annoying, from a human perspective. And even when they do turn out, by some quirk, to be useful, that’s typically incidental to what makes them interesting.

Live-Tweeting The Scotland Vote

Originally posted at 8.49 EST. Scroll down for the latest updates, in rough chronological order:

Face Of The Day

BRITAIN-SCOTLAND-INDEPENDENCE-VOTE

Ballots are counted at the Emirates Sports Arena in Glasgow on September 18, 2014, after the polls close in the referendum on Scotland’s independence. The question for voters at Scotland’s more than 5,000 polling stations is “Should Scotland be an independent country?” and they are asked to mark either “Yes” or “No”. The result is expected in the early hours of Friday. By Andy Buchanan/AFP/Getty Images.

Defaulting On Venezuelans

This article by Ricardo Hausmann and Miguel Angel Santos is getting attention from Venezuela-watchers (and President Maduro, who hated it – so you know they’re on to something). The pair argue that the country should default on its sovereign debt, because the government’s commitment to paying its creditors effectively means it’s defaulting on its citizens:

Severe shortages of life-saving drugs in Venezuela are the result of the government’s default on a $3.5 billion bill for pharmaceutical imports. A similar situation prevails throughout the rest of the economy. Payment arrears on food imports amount to $2.4 billion, leading to a substantial shortage of staple goods. In the automobile sector, the default exceeds $3 billion, leading to a collapse in transport services as a result of a lack of spare parts. Airline companies are owed $3.7 billion, causing many to suspend activities and overall service to fall by half.

In Venezuela, importers must wait six months after goods have cleared customs to buy previously authorized dollars. But the government has opted to default on these obligations, too, leaving importers with a lot of useless local currency. For a while, credit from foreign suppliers and headquarters made up for the lack of access to foreign currency; but, given mounting arrears and massive devaluations, credit has dried up.

Felix Salmon likes their way of thinking about defaults, which squares with his own formulation of last year’s US sequester:

America eventually cured its default, and never graduated to defaulting on Treasury bonds. But Venezuela’s problems are harder to fix. And at some point, it simply won’t make sense to spend desperately-needed billions on foreign bondholders any more.

Indeed, if you ask Ricardo Hausmann, he’ll tell you that not only is Venezuela there already, but that even the technocrats IMF would recommend a sovereign bond default at this point. For all that it’s embarrassing and politically perilous for any government to default on its sovereign debt, then, I suspect that a fully-fledged default in Venezuela is now only a matter of time. Right now bondholders are probably safe, or safe-ish. But if and when Citgo is sold, alongside Venezuela’s other foreign holdings, I can’t imagine that the country will continue to pay its coupons in full. Indeed, Venezuela owes it to its citizens not to.

Harold Trinkunas considers the political implications:

Venezuela’s economic crisis has led to speculation that the 2015 legislative elections will be the next flashpoint in its ongoing domestic political conflict. Support for the government in Venezuela tracks closely with economic performance and domestic consumption (PPT), both of which have tanked in the past year. In fact, the Venezuelan government was only able to reverse negative public opinion trends before the December 2013 elections through a forced-sale of private inventories of consumer electronics and home appliances. Former planning minister Jorge Giordani admitted that the government had spent vast amounts in 2011 and 2012 to ensure the re-election of Hugo Chavez in 2013. Current economic indicators do not bode well for the regime’s electoral prospects, and the Maduro administration lacks the financial reserves to use public spending to increase domestic consumption next year. Importantly, this is not a regime that has reacted well to losing elections in the past.

And Juan Nagel zooms in on the country’s collapsing healthcare system:

Venezuela imports most of its medicines. There is a local drug manufacturing industry, but they do little research and simply manufacture medicine using imported raw material. The country’s cash shortage is throwing a wrench in that process. As one drug manufacturer explained, “I have a backlog of requests for currency that have not been approved, and without [currency] I cannot import the raw material I need. When I manage to get a shipment of medicine out, much of it ends up in the black market.” The Central Bank said in March of this year that 50 percent of drugs are missing from the shelves. It has since stopped publishing the data.

Due to the country’s overbearing price controls, there is a thriving black market for Venezuelan drugs. A fraction of the country’s drugs ends up in neighboring countries, where they fetch market prices. Unsurprisingly, Venezuelans have started bartering drugs on Twitter and other social media.

Sleep Is For The Rich

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Olga Khazan explains:

Though Americans across the economic spectrum are sleeping less these days, people in the lowest income quintile, and people who never finished high school, are far more likely to get less than seven hours of shut-eye per night. About half of people in households making less than $30,000 sleep six or fewer hours per night, while only a third of those making $75,000 or more do.

Unsurprisingly, shift workers face the greatest risk of sleep deprivation; they get two to four hours less sleep than average. The consequences can be dire:

Exposure to bright light when it’s time to sleep makes it harder for the body to produce melatonin, a sleep hormone. Over time, this sleep deprivation translates to an increased risk for heart disease, gastrointestinal problems, and reproductive issues. … For some, a sleep shortfall can lead to narcolepsy-like symptoms. One study found that 53 percent of night-shift workers report falling asleep accidentally on the job.