Saturday, March 04, 2023

Empathy

 The so-called “culture wars” that continue to shape many of our political conflicts are really just very old battles over an imagined past versus an imagined future. Or at least some people’s idealized versions of a past, i.e., the suburban 1950s, over other’s idealized visions of a future, i.e., 1960s Woodstock.

But of course the roots of the conflict are much older and deeper than that.

Every parent of a young child knows that for some reason, human babies fight over resources, seemingly out of instinct. Fighting between siblings, for example, seems to be natural and much of the socializing process involves teaching toddlers concepts like sharing and fairness.

Or if you prefer one word, it would be empathy. But it’s not entirely clear that empathy can be taught; some people naturally have it, others perhaps less so. Some, most certainly, not at all.

In any event, the underlying urge for each individual to take care of him or herself remains throughout life, balanced against the instinct to care for others. But unfortunately, we find ourselves inside a culture seemingly interminably at war with itself over personal matters, like gender identity, sexual orientation and behavior, resource allocation, discrimination in its many forms, religious beliefs, even clothing styles, hair length and eating habits.

Actually, the list is much, much longer — it covers almost everything.

Regrettably, certain politicians — Ron DeSantis is an example — seem to build almost their entire political identity by staking out one extreme slice of the culture war pie. When I was young, a group staking out the other extreme — the Yippees — thrived in the public spotlight for a very brief moment in time, but they never had any political power.

The problem with those on either extreme is they need to demonize the other side in order to prove their own worth. And in the process, they just make everything worse.

We don’t need leaders like these people. We need people who bring us together. The past was never as good as those who idealize it would have us believe, and the future will never be either.

Like toddlers, we need to learn how to play and share together and to resolve our inevitable conflicts peacefully and with mutual respect. We don’t need to make each other into false enemies. We live neither in the past nor in the future. And we need leaders who recognize that.

LINKS:

  • Russians pound access routes to Ukraine's besieged Bakhmut (Reuters)

  • Russia may run out of money in 2024, says oligarch (CNN)

  • In First Wartime Meeting, Blinken Confronts His Russian Counterpart (NYT)

  • A court in Belarus sentenced Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights activist Ales Bialiatski to 10 years in prison for financing protests and other crimes, in a case that rights groups say was politically motivated. (Reuters)

  • Afghan Women, Banned From Working, Can’t Provide for Their Children (WSJ)

  • After seven years of Brexit talks, Europe has emerged as the clear winner (Economist)

  • A new generation of Palestinian fighters is rising up in the West Bank (WP)

  • Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) made his state the latest to ban gender-affirming health care ― and the first to criminalize certain drag shows ― after the state’s Republican-controlled legislature sent the bills to his desk. States with similar bans include Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and Utah. More bans are pending elsewhere. [HuffPost]

  • Abortion clinics crossing state borders spark local disputes (AP)

  • The Supreme Court signaled it may sidestep a ruling in a major case involving a Republican bid to give state legislatures far more power over federal elections by limiting the ability of state courts to review their actions. (Reuters)

  • Mark Zuckerberg Quietly Buries the Metaverse (The Street)

  • The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it (MIT Technology Review)

  • Want Isaac Asimov Can Teach Us About AI (Atlantic)

  • OpenAI Seems Like a Very Sleazy Company to Be Creating World-Changing AGI (Futurism)

  • AI Chatbots are Even Scarier Than You Think (CounterPunch)

  • Robot provides unprecedented views below Antarctic ice shelf (Phys.org)

  • The Antarctic ice sheet is melting. And this is bad news for humanity (The Conversation)

  • Fossil fuels kill more people than Covid. Why are we so blind to the harms of oil and gas? (Guardian)

  • Watch how the continents have shifted over the past 100 million years (New Scientist)

  • Japan just found 7,000 islands it didn’t know it had (CNN)

  • Fox News bosses scolded reporters who challenged false election claims (WP)

  • Zoom boss Greg Tomb fired ‘without cause’ (BBC)

  • State AG pushes back on Brooke Jenkins' attempt to pass off SF cop case (SFGate)

  • Daniel Ellsberg, who rose to prominence after leaking the Pentagon Papers to the media in 1971, revealing that multiple U.S. presidents had systematically lied to Congress and the public about the circumstances around the Vietnam War, said he’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer and has about six months to live. [HuffPost]

  • High Cost Of Child Care Forcing More Toddlers To Work Their Way Through Preschool (The Onion)

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Friday, March 03, 2023

Into the Sea (Afghan Report 57)

 NOTE: The stories are tragic but all too familiar: A boat carrying refugees desperate to find a better life sets off for Europe or America. The voyages mainly occur under cover of darkness and they are extremely hazardous. Often they fail to reach their goal. 

In the past few days, almost lost in the flow of the news, yet another such incident occurred. A boat crammed with men, women and children from Asia hit a rock off the coast of Italy and overturned. More than 100 people lost their lives, at least 80 of them from Afghanistan.

My Afghan friend says this sad news will in no way reduce the attempts of his countrymen to escape, because they are desperate. Here is his report.

Dear David:

For the people of Afghanistan, we just want to flee, to get away from the land that has brought nothing but suffering, sadness, violence and hunger to its citizens. That is why migration and escape is the substance of almost every conversation with any group of Afghans. They ask each other about new ways of reaching other countries, discuss changes in the immigration situation, and share any immigration opportunities they have heard of, even if they are rumors.

For example, during the week, I have many conversations with my family members, my work colleague Timur, and my friend Narges. My mother's biggest wish is that I can leave Afghanistan and she repeats this wish in her conversations with me constantly. One of Timur's daily questions is whether I have received any new information about the opportunity to immigrate somewhere. Narges is always looking for scholarships in countries other than Afghanistan and wants me to help her write her applications.

Personally, whenever I feel depressed, I think maybe escaping to anywhere but here would help. 

Just an hour ago, my brother called and asked about the email I sent to the Brazilian embassy in Tehran six months ago. A year ago, Brazil announced that it would give 60,000 humanitarian visas to Afghans. I told him the same as always – that I have received no response.

Whenever one of my friends or family members reaches the point of final desperation and decides to take one of the extremely dangerous illegal paths of escape, I try to dissuade them. But at that point they prefer death to living in Afghanistan, so they are not afraid of fleeing into the valleys, drowning in the sea, falling into the hands of kidnappers, and freezing in the mountains. 

They simply decide that to take a leap in the dark is better than to live like this.

NOTE: This is the latest in an ongoing series of conversations with my Afghan friend about life under the Taliban.

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Thursday, March 02, 2023

Human Intelligence

Since AI in the form of chatbots has finally emerged to widespread human consciousness, it’s a good time to revisit the 2014 film called “The Imitation Game,” based on the life of English mathematician and cryptologist Alan Turing.

Turing is widely considered the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.

The film is an entertaining and mostly accurate interpretation of his life during World War II, when he worked for the British government to crack German codes.

It is also a highly relevant reminder of the terrible toll homophobia has taken on so many lives, including Turing’s, at a time certain politicians attempt to role back the advances we have made toward fair and equal treatment of all people regardless of gender or sexual preference.

After his wartime service, Turing was convicted of “gross indecency” (i.e., homosexuality) and sentenced to chemical castration, which led to his death, probably by suicide but perhaps by accident, in 1954 at the age of 41. 

In 2013, Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a posthumous Royal Pardon, honoring his work leading to the creation of the modern computer.

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Wednesday, March 01, 2023

Saturday Night



 

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iHop Lunch






 

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The Fox That Got Caught

During his recent deposition, Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch admitted his network stars knowingly lied while supporting Donald Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election being stolen.

This is bad news for the company’s defense in the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, as it appears to meet the legal standard for reckless disregard of the truth.

Therefore, Fox could potentially face damages in the neighborhood of $1.6 billion, a substantial fine for a company with roughly $14.3 billion in annual revenue. But the speculation that this could be the “end” for Fox is wishful thinking.

A large media company like Fox carries massive libel insurance coverage — policies that are in turn resold in smaller chunks throughout the reinsurance industry, so that no one insurer is overexposed in the unlikely event such a large damage is awarded by a court.

Thanks to Murdoch’s testimony and other damning evidence, this may indeed be one of those rare occasions that a media company suffers a loss of this magnitude for defamation, but Fox as an entity should easily survive.

As the insurance industry absorbs the majority of the hit, however, libel insurance rates will no doubt rise throughout the media sector for everybody. Therefore, the sad irony is that Fox’s choice to commit its unspeakable violation of the trust implicit between media and their audiences will hurt everyone else in the business — especially smaller media companies less cushioned against cost increases because they do not have anywhere near Fox’s revenue flow.

(CNN, for example, is only one-seventh Fox’s size, with $2 billion annual revenue.)

If anything good comes of all this, perhaps in the future Fox “journalists” will be forced to adhere more closely to the standards of the profession they purport to be a part of. But that is probably wishful thinking on my part.

Meanwhile, what the rest of us need to worry about is the damage those Fox hosts have done to the system that gives them the freedom to speak in the first place — our democracy. Thanks to Fox, millions still believe the 2020 election was stolen. They were lied to but don’t realize that or maybe they don’t even care at this point.

For them it’s too late. Their belief in democracy is dead. Those of us who still believe in it are badly weakened as a result.

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Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Truth(s) -- Covid Lab Leak Origin

Where to start?

It snowed in L.A. That’s as good a lede as anyone could want, but the return of the Covid-lab origin story is what’s on my mind today.

First, a digression of sorts. Recently, one of my grandchildren went on a rant about an assignment from her English teacher to analyze the meaning of a short work of fiction.

“The words just mean what they mean,” she complained. “Why search for some sort of hidden meaning in there?”

I stopped myself from trying to answer her rhetorical question in the moment, but it stuck with me, probably because long ago I too would have gotten defensive at similar assignments due to youth and inexperience.

However, the way I would address the question now, 60 years later, is that I have come to appreciate that there may be multiple interpretations of great works of fiction or other art forms — that the same words or images may evoke differing interpretations and reactions from different people, all sincerely looking for the same agreed-upon answer.

Perhaps I’ll get around to telling my granddaughter this at some point. But for now, I’m still thinking about the implications of I just wrote in another context — the news.

Few people would consider my profession — journalism — an art form, since what journalists are tasked with doing is to document the truth in one particular matter and that implies eliminating the ambiguity of multiple interpretations, if possible, much like the process of determining guilt or innocence in our legal system.

Yet there is an art to the process.

To begin with, there is an underlying premise that one distinct truth must exist, as my granddaughter’s frustration with her literature assignment also presumes.

The problem is that the facts sometimes get in the way. Facts can be messy and inconvenient. Sometimes, it appears, there are actually multiple truths simultaneously in play. That is truly confusing for the truth-seeker in all of us.

Not only do we bring our own unique mix of experience and outlook to the table, in some cases we arrive at a table so deeply divided by ideology and personal identity that an inconvenient truth doesn’t stand a chance.

The latest Covid-lab origin controversy may be a case in point. That theory was so deeply politicized by then-President Donald Trump when it was first posited that most people chose sides and didn’t wish to reconsider their position.

But time has passed and perhaps passions have cooled. The only reservation I have about this report is its timing., since it comes at a moment of rising tension between the U.S. government and China over the latter’s aid to Russia in the Ukrainian war.

Two earlier posts related to this topic:

Did Covid-19 Come From a Lab? (1.28.21)

(image from wiki commons)

Though I've been writing essays every day for a year now, every one of them dealing at least partially with the pandemic, only twice have I ventured into the controversy over whether the virus that causes Covid-19 may have been created in a Chinese lab.

The first time was last April 15th (I'll reprint a summary of that piece below), when I recounted the sordid history of the U.S. government's experimentation with biological agents against its own population. To me, that is important context for this conversation.

The second time is today.

Like everything about this pandemic, its origin a loaded issue, since Trump demonized the "China virus," implying at times that it may have been a deliberate plot by the Communist regime in Beijing.

While that still could be true, I doubt it. But an accidental lab origin scenario is more persuasive.

Nicholson Baker recently published his detailed inquiry in New York magazine assessing whether SARS-CoV-2 originated in nature or escaped from China's only BSL-4 lab in Wuhan. 

A BSL-4 laboratory is a maximum-security biosafety facility that conducts research on the most dangerous known pathogens. The facility in question is called the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the U.S. government has partially funded its work for years.

First, Nicholson documents that there have been repeated accidents, exposures and deaths over the many decades that biological agents have been studied at BSL-4 labs in the U.S.

In the case of SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19), its specific characteristics more closely resemble an organism cultivated in a lab, Nicholson contends, than any that are known to occur in nature. But scientists are divided about this point and there remains broad controversy over his interpretation.

The Chinese government early on chose to suppress any suggestion that the virus may have been of an artificial (i.e. lab) origin, so very little useful information has emerged from the birthplace of the pandemic. 

But Nicholson suggests that the RaTG13 bat virus, which is the closest known cousin to SARS-CoV-2 and has been used in experiments at the Wuhan facility for years, may have somehow escaped the lab and caused this awful pandemic.

His is the most logical theory I have seen to date. If it proves to be true, or even if it doesn't, we need to consider whether the kind of research conducted at BSL-4 labs really is in our best interests. It is much like nuclear bomb research -- the risks simply seem too high.

Human error is not the only issue here. We also have to be cognizant of the ever-present danger of corruption. In a disturbing development yesterday, a whistleblower report broke indicating that the agency of the U.S. government engaged in managing this highly sensitive work -- the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority -- has misused millions of dollars of funds.

Just imagine the national security risks inherent in that situation.

***

"The Origin of Covid-19" (4.15.20)

As I was sorting through my books earlier this year, identifying a tiny percentage to keep while recycling the great majority of them, one slender volume caught my eye:

"Clouds of Secrecy: The Army's Germ Warfare Tests Over Populated Areas" by Leonard A. Cole, a bioterrorism expert.and author based at Rutgers.

I reviewed Cole's book for The New York Times when it appeared in 1988. His work was based on previously classified material that documented how the U.S. government deliberately exposed our population to viruses on a mass basis to gauge how vulnerable this country could be should an enemy launch a bioterrorism attack.

At the time, it was a shocking revelation, though the context included other government-sanctioned experiments such as administering LSD to unsuspecting American citizens.

These dark chapters in our government's history remain somewhat shrouded in mystery; any conscientious person wold hope such episodes ended long ago.

But the problem is that ours is not the only government capable of this kind of abhorrent behavior. China's government certainly is. Might there be bioterrorism labs say in the Wuhan region of China? I do not know. [UPDATE: We now know that there is one such lab.--DW]

I want to be crystal clear and explicit here about what I am proposing. I am *not* suggesting that Covid-19 is the result of a rogue government experiment. I have no evidence of that and frankly I doubt it is the case.

But to ignore history is to risk repeating it -- a cliche that like many cliches has more than a germ of truth.

What I am proposing is that journalists with sources in the military and intelligence agencies should dig into the hypothesis that Covid-19 may have been tested by governments as a possible agent for germ warfare.

The cover story for such experimentation is always to help a nation to prepare its defenses against attack. But when it comes to a runaway virus that spreads throughout the human population, there is no defense.

It can't be stopped.

I've been dismissive in my essays of the 30 percent of the American population who believe that Covid-19 was created in a lab. That's because I hate conspiracy theories -- they are the opposite of what I believe journalism is -- they are preposterous fictions that feed on fear and paranoia.

We are seeing the worst of fear and paranoia swirling around this pandemic, as demagogues exploit the moment in a quest to consolidate their power and manipulate vulnerable populations.

Yet that cannot prevent us, as journalists, from checking out every lead, however tenuous, about what is actually happening here.

As far as I can tell, scientists have no concrete evidence on why this particular virus suddenly and virulently attacked us. Millions of people have become sick and many have died. 

If there is any evidence that something untoward is afoot here, it remains confined to the classified realm of information.

NEWS LINKS (2/28/23):

  • Energy Department finds COVID-19 most likely emerged from lab leak, reports say: What we know (USA Today)

  • US Energy Department assesses Covid-19 likely resulted from lab leak, furthering US intel divide over virus origin (CNN)

  • The Scientific Error That Might Have Caused The Covid-19 Pandemic (Forbes)

  • Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says (NYT)

  • The End of the English Major — Enrollment in the humanities is in free fall at colleges around the country. What happened? (New Yorker)

  • China has urged peace after a U.S. warning of serious consequences if it provided arms to support Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Washington and its NATO allies are scrambling to dissuade China from providing military aid for Moscow's war.  (Reuters)

  • U.N. Human Rights Council begins session with condemnation of Russian aggression (WP)

  • DeSantis takes over Disney district, punishing company (AP)

  • Supreme Court to hear Biden’s student loan forgiveness arguments Tuesday. 3 things to know (CNBC)

  • Twitter reportedly laid off as many as 200 employees over the weekend, including a key figure who helped establish the site’s new system to charge for verification. The cuts impacted people on several important teams, including product managers and engineers that help keep Twitter online. [HuffPost]

  • Elon Musk says remaining Twitter employees will soon receive ‘very significant’ stock awards (The Verge)

  • 'I Worked on Google's AI. My Fears Are Coming True' (Newsweek)

  • AI learns to outsmart humans in video games - and real life (AP)

  • Just how big is this new generative AI? Think internet-level disruption (ZDNet)

  • A Chatbot Is Secretly Doing My Job (Atlantic)

  • RadioGPT: 'World’s first' AI-driven radio station is here (Interesting Engineering)

  • SOLA: Daring to educate Afghanistan's girls (60 Minutes/CBS)

  • Defense crime scene expert raises two-shooter theory in Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial (CNN)

  • Research reveals climate crisis is driving a rise in human-wildlife conflicts (Guardian)

  • Memories of Wounded Knee reflect mixed legacy after 50 years (AP)

  • Fox News anchor Howard Kurtz admitted he "strongly" disagrees with Fox News' decision to forbid him from reporting on the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against the network over its 2020 election coverage. “I believe I should be covering it," Kurtz said. "But the company has decided that as part of the organization being sued, I can’t talk about it or write about it, at least for now." [HuffPost]

  • Dalai Lama Worried There’s Nothing More To Life Than Feeling Deep Connection With All Existence (The Onion)

 

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Monday, February 27, 2023

If It Looks Like a Bird...

In the latest New Yorker, there’s a cartoon depicting two large birds flying over a swath of open land. “Whatever you do,” one says to the other, “don’t look like a balloon.”

The only thing U.S. officials have yet confirmed about that recent spate of shooting down unknown flying objects is that the first of them was definitely a spy balloon from China. The others were probably private weather or hobby balloons.

But whatever they turn out to have been, they’ve either stopping drifting over North America or the U.S. military has stopped shooting them down. Either way, as the cartoon suggests, it’s perhaps best viewed as a laughing matter at this point.

Because now we have a much juicer topic regarding the origin of the Covid virus. (See first link below.)

Stories come and go across the never-ending global news cycle, appearing and evaporating in quick succession, only to be replaced by ever more strange and wonderful oddities. As well as fiendishly scary reports about the possibility of nuclear war or cataclysmic climate change.

It seems that as a species we just can’t help getting into fatal confrontations with each other; our largest empires facing off in Ukraine, Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia with local hotspots nearly everywhere else.

The war in Ukraine is the biggest, of course, and has generated much publicity as it reached its first anniversary a few days ago. The weakest of the bullies on the current global stage — Putin — rants and raves about his nuclear prowess while the U.S, and China negotiate what to do about him.

In the process, the world’s two biggest powers eye each other suspiciously, using spy balloons as well as any other available technology to try and gain an advantage. Meanwhile, as we humans play these endlessly destructive games, the other creatures on the planet just try to stay out of our gunsights as they go about their normal business, i.e., drifting in the wind.

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Sunday, February 26, 2023

Weekend New(s)

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