Kristof visits North Korea and is alarmed

October 8, 2017 • 10:30 am

Nicholas Kristof has a column in today’s New York Times, “Inside North Korea, and feeling the drums of war,” based on a trip he just made to the DPRK. (The U.S. gave him and a few journalists special exemption from the new travel ban.) Kristof was especially concerned with the fate of college student Otto Warmbier, who visited the country on a tour, was accused of stealing a poster, and then, after being arrested on January 2, 2016 at Pyongyang airport, was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. After 17 months in prison, he was returned to the U.S. on June 2 of this year in a comatose state, and died on June 19. He was 22.

North Korean officials say that Warmbier contracted botulism shortly after his arrest, and then fell into a coma after taking a sleeping pill. Unfortunately, his parents didn’t allow an autopsy, so we don’t know what killed him, but the fact is that even according to the DPRK he’d been comatose for about a year and a half before he was returned to the U.S. Yes, the DPRK is evil, but this plumbs the depths of depravity. If the DPRK didn’t kill him through mistreatment or torture, they certainly kept him away from his family. My own view is that they killed him, but that’s just a hypothesis.

Click on the video below to see the dissimulation of a senior ministry official of the DPRK, Choe Kang-il, who insists that America killed Warmbier as a propaganda move. Kang-il also makes a few disparaging comments about Trump, with which I can’t disagree, but the lies that pervade this regime are frightening. Millions of people live under an oppressive totalitarianism, starved, worked to death, and subject to endless propaganda and threats of death and imprisonment. Without doubt, North Korea is the most evil country on Earth, and there’s nothing we can do about it. I weep for its people who will never know a life of freedom, or experience a belly that is full.

 Kristof detected a distinct change from his previous visits to the DPRK, and not a good one:

I’ve been covering North Korea on and off since the 1980s, and this five-day trip has left me more alarmed than ever about the risks of a catastrophic confrontation.

I was given a visa to North Korea, as were three other New York Times journalists. The U.S. State Department promptly gave us an exemption from the travel ban to North Korea and issued special passports good for a single trip here.

Far more than when I previously visited, North Korea is galvanizing its people to expect a nuclear war with the United States. High school students march in the streets in military uniform every day to denounce America. Posters and billboards along the public roads show missiles destroying the U.S. Capitol and shredding the American flag. In fact, images of missiles are everywhere — in a kindergarten playground, at a dolphin show, on state television. This military mobilization is accompanied by the ubiquitous assumption that North Korea could not only survive a nuclear conflict, but also win it.

. . . On past trips (my last was in 2005), we journalists stayed at hotels in the capital and were free to walk around on our own, but this time the Foreign Ministry housed us at its own guarded Kobangsan Guest House east of the capital. At first I thought this was simply to restrict us, but increasingly I saw signs of something more interesting and menacing: The Foreign Ministry was also protecting us from hard-liners in the military or in the security services.

“Someone might hear you are from America,” and there could be trouble, one official explained.

When Trump said this week, at a dinner with military officials and their families, that “You guys know what this represents? Maybe it’s the calm before the storm”, the first thing I thought of was North Korea (the second was Iran). But the DPRK is already a storm, and it seems more likely that Trump was just blowing words out of his nether parts. Still, Kristof is worried, and so am I:

“The situation on the Korean Peninsula is on the eve of the breakout of nuclear war,” Choe, the Foreign Ministry official, told me. “We can survive” such a war, he added, and he and other officials said that it was not the right time for talks with the U.S.

The North Koreans insist that the U.S. make the first move and drop its sanctions and “hostile attitude” — which won’t happen. And the U.S. is equally unrealistic in insisting that North Korea give up its entire nuclear program.

. . . What makes this moment so perilous is that North Koreans are steeped in the idea that they have repeatedly defeated the U.S. — and can do so again. Every single person we spoke to, from officials to students, voiced certainty that if war breaks out, America will end up in ashes and the Kim regime will emerge victorious.

I’m not worried about Kim Jong-un starting a war, though there’s the possibility that a misfired missile could trigger U.S. and South Korean military action. Kim Jon-un is not suicidal. I’m more worried that Trump will order a preemptive strike, which would be disastrous, resulting in the destruction of North Korea and its people, as well as much of South Korea. I’m confident that Trump’s military advisors would counsel against this, but of course Trump is Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military and has the legal authority to order such a strike. All I can hope for is that the man has at least a soupçon of sense. I’m counting on that, as I don’t want to see a nuclear war in my lifetime, nor millions of innocent people killed. As Kristof says, “One recent study suggested that if North Korea detonated nuclear weapons over Tokyo and Seoul, deaths in those two cities alone could exceed two million.”

The best we can hope for is to tolerate a nuclear North Korea. It’s not pleasant but it beats the alternative. At any rate, this is nothing I haven’t said before. Read Kristof’s piece to see how deeply weird both the situation and the DPRK itself is, and to see his suggestion (talks) to defuse the crisis.

California downgrades the act of knowingly exposing someone to HIV from a felony to a misdemeanor

October 8, 2017 • 9:00 am

Suppose you’re infected with a sexually transmitted disease that, unless treated, is deadly. When treated, you have a good chance of living a normal life, so you’re getting treated. But you want to have sex with other people, and if they know you’re infected, they might not want to engage. So you don’t tell them your condition.

That’s clearly immoral, and even a crime, but what kind of crime? When the infection was with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), it used to be a felony, at least in California. When the virus overwhelms the immune system, you get AIDS, and while that’s no longer a death sentence, it can kill you.

Up until now, knowingly exposing someone to HIV without telling them was a felony, at least in California. That seems to me appropriate, and a good incentive to tell your potential sex partners. You are, after all, infecting them with a deadly virus that, if untreated, stands a good chance of killing them. (Of course having unprotected sex these days with someone who hasn’t been declared STD-free is a real crapshoot, but if you know you’re infected, it’s your obligation to tell your partners.)

Now, however, withholding your HIV status from exposed partners is no longer a felony in California: thanks to governor Jerry Brown, it’s become a misdemeanor. According to the Los Angeles Times, this also goes for giving blood, though I think all donated blood is screened for HIV these days. From the article:

Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill Friday that lowers from a felony to a misdemeanor the crime of knowingly exposing a sexual partner to HIV without disclosing the infection.

The measure also applies to those who give blood without telling the blood bank that they are HIV-positive.

Modern medicine allows those with HIV to live longer lives and nearly eliminates the possibility of transmission, according to state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Assemblyman Todd Gloria (D-San Diego), authors of the bill.

“Today California took a major step toward treating HIV as a public health issue, instead of treating people living with HIV as criminals,” Wiener said in a statement. “HIV should be treated like all other serious infectious diseases, and that’s what SB 239 does.”

But HIV isn’t like flu or even syphilis or gonorrhea. The latter STDs have early symptoms that will drive you to the doctor at a point when the disease can be cured. HIV can linger undetected in the body for years before it erupts into full-blown AIDS. And if you get those STDs, you can be cured with a round of antibiotics; with HIV you have to go on an expensive regimen of drugs that lasts the rest of your life.

Now there’s one other justification that the lawmakers gave:

The current law, Wiener argued, may convince people not to be tested for HIV, because without a test they cannot be charged with a felony if they expose a partner to the infection.

“We are going to end new HIV infections, and we will do so not by threatening people with state prison time, but rather by getting people to test and providing them access to care,” Wiener said.

In other words, if you suspect you have HIV, they claim, you’re more likely to get tested if you realize that infecting someone whom you don’t tell is just a misdemeanor. To me that makes little sense. If you suspect you have HIV, you get yourself tested and go on the pills—unless you want to die. I doubt that the ability to have unprotected sex with anyone will outweigh your fear of death.

Further, not everybody who is infected gets tested or diagnosed, and even fewer of those go on the necessary medication regimen, which is expensive and sometimes hard to stick to.

But are people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS really living normal lives? The U.S. government’s stats suggest otherwise:

In 2015, 18,303 people were diagnosed with AIDS. Since the epidemic began in the early 1980s, 1,216,917 people have been diagnosed with AIDS.

In 2014, there were 12,333 deaths (due to any cause) of people with diagnosed HIV infection ever classified as AIDS, and 6,721 deaths were attributed directly to HIV.

And this:

Brown declined to comment on his action.

As best I can determine, about 30 people die annually from congenital syphilis: about 0.4% the frequency of deaths from HIV.  That means that infection with HIV is far more likely to kill you, and remember that some of those who died of HIV were probably being treated.

I think most of you will agree that the degree of punishment for knowingly exposing someone to a disease should be proportional to the severity of that disease. Given the statistics, and the unconvincing claim that downgrading exposure to HIV from a felony to a misdemeanor will promote more HIV testing, I’d say that California has made a mistake. (This, of course, could change as the statistics change.)

Do you agree?

h/t: Cindy

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 8, 2017 • 7:45 am

Comments on the photo posts have been few, and I’m not sure whether that means people aren’t looking at them. But I’d urge you to say something if you like a photo, for the contributors surely like their work to be appreciated, and that’s the only way they’ll know. If you see something, say something. And remember to send in your good photos!

Today we have a potpourri of photos and a video.  The photographers’ notes are indented.

The first few are from reader Damon:

Attached are some photos of Diamondback Water Snakes (Nerodia rhombifera) from South Texas that I took earlier in spring.

From reader Tim Anderson in Australia:

This is an Apostle bird (Struthidea cinerea). Its name derives from the fact that it generally goes about in groups of about a dozen. They are constantly fussing and nattering away, even when they are on their own. They have a black band across their face, which makes them look like bandits. Just about my favourite bird.

Reader Michael Glenister sent in two damselfly photos, and I regret that I lost the email that may have identified them. Perhaps readers can help:

A squirrel from Randy Schenck in Iowa:

Time for a Fox squirrel (Sciurus niger) close up.  The nails might need a trim but you can count the whiskers if you want.

And a movie from reader Ben Dreidel showing that cats aren’t the only beasts who can train their staff:

This is a video from our recent family vacation. The bald eagle has trained the tour boat to give him a fish when they come by so he can fly down and grab it for the tourists’ cameras.

 

Sunday: Hili dialogue

October 8, 2017 • 6:30 am

Praise Ceiling Cat, from whom all good things flow: it’s Sunday, October 8, 2017. Here in America it’s National Fluffernutter Day, and if you don’t know what that is, click the link (not recommended). And it’s Air Force Day in India.

Not much happened on this day in history (maybe history slows down in this hemisphere when winter approaches). But on October 8, 1918, American corporal Alvin C. York singlehandedly killed 28 German soldiers and captured 132 (as well as 35 machine guns), a feat for which he received the Medal of Honor.  Raised in extreme poverty in Appalachia, York became a hard drinker and then stopped when he became a Christian. A conscientious objector, he nevertheless served in the Army and, when the time came, did his duty. After the war, when he became famous, he turned down many lucrative offers, preferring to become a farmer and start a Bible school. “Sergeant York,” a 1940 movie based on his exploits, and starring Gary Cooper, became a huge hit (I’ve seen it several times); it got Cooper the Best Actor Oscar.

Here’s a battle scene from the movie:

And the real Alvin York:

On this day in 1956, New York Yankees pitcher Don Larsen performed a baseball feat that never happened before and hasn’t happened since. Do you know what it is?  On October 8, 1967, Che Guevara was captured in Bolivia; he was executed the next day. On this day in 1982, the musical Cats opened on Broadway. It ran almost 18 years, closing on September 10, 2000. I never saw it despite my love of cats. The notion of humans in cat suits playing felids somehow doesn’t appeal. On this day in 2001, George W. Bush established the Office of Homeland Security. One of its sub-agencies is the Transportation Security Administration, is specially tasked with groping my buttocks every time I travel. Finally, on October 8, 2014, the first person in America diagnosed with Ebola virus died.

Notables born on this day are few, including only Chevy Chase (1943) and Sigourney Weaver (1949, only three months older than I ). Those who died on this day were also few, including, Henry Fielding (1754), Wendell Willkie (1944), Willy Brandt (1992), and Paul Prudhomme (2015).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, reports are that Hili is starting to put on her winter weight. But she’s still trying to look like a predator:

A: You look threatening.
Hili: I’m trying.
In Polish:
Ja: Groźnie wyglądasz.
Hili: Staram się.

Here are some police saving a brood of ducklings that fell into a drain, and reuniting them with their mother. Who says all cops are bad?

From Matthew we have two edifying tw**ts. First, LOOK AT THIS BIRD! To find out more, go to Wikipedia’s long-wattled umbrellabird (Cephalopterus penduliger) page, where you’ll learn why only the males have the long throat wattle.

https://twitter.com/joebloggs8040/status/914362314945699846

And, in China, a tidal bore moving upstream strikes the water going downstream:

Alice Dreger: Colleges and students suffer from lack of intellectual humility (and a note on Templeton)

October 7, 2017 • 12:15 pm

I looked forward to reading a new piece by Alice Dreger at the Chronicle of Higher Education: “Take back the ivory tower” (subtitle: “Democracy depends on having a public capable of thinking”). I really enjoyed her book Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science, and gave it a positive mini-review on this site. Dreger is a bioethicist who left Northwestern University (academic home of Laura Kipnis) after the administration censored a piece in a magazine she edited (the story’s in her essay). She also has the great honor of having one of her pieces pulled from Everyday Feminism because of her supposed transphobia (she’s not a transphobe, but her work on gender has raised a lot of hackles).

Sadly, I was disappointed by the Chronicle piece because it seemed disjointed, the writing wasn’t that great (too breezy), and it didn’t say much I didn’t know. However, if you haven’t followed Dreger, you will learn a bit about her; she’s a courageous woman who’s working in an academic area that’s similar to a powder keg with a lit fuse:

I have enjoyed meeting and talking with every one of the plainclothes armed guards who have come to my invited lectures to protect me and my audiences in the past few years. They have never looked as handsome as Kevin Costner, but then I don’t sing as well as Whitney Houston. [JAC: This is the kind of sentence that sounds clever but is irksome and distracting.]

Why do my hosts sometimes arrange armed guards? To use Aristotle’s framing — which I realize marks me a tool of the patriarchy — the efficient cause is threats designed to have me disinvited and humiliated for my supposed sins. The formal cause is a climate in which some people, including academics, think I should be silenced because my scholarship is “dangerous.”

What did I do to mark myself? I spent a year documenting the lies of activists about a group of researchers who put forth unpopular ideas about transgenderism. I have also written about transgenderism in other ways that challenge what have been positioned as the “acceptable” narratives. Thus, I stand accused of committing “structural violence” — even being responsible for physical violence against transgender people, about whose rights I care deeply.

My work has, in fact, focused on the history of the abuse of sexual minorities in science, medicine, and society. I have tried to push for the rights of sexual minorities from a consistently feminist perspective. Thus you may be surprised to hear that I have certain “lived experiences” in common with people like Charles Murray. If you have followed mainstream media portrayals of free-speech strife on campuses, you may have reasonably concluded that activists have tried to silence only white men. Only through the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) — a group that has defended my rights — will you hear about the troubles of people like me, women in women-and-gender-studies programs, and people of color in various ethnic-studies programs who have failed to swear allegiance to the latest creed.

This is all old stuff if you’ve followed Dreger, but it does show again the demonization of someone who’s considered ideologically impure—and if there’s any area where ideological impurity is a near certainty, it’s the study of transgender people. But this information isn’t really relevant to Dreger’s thesis, which can be compactly summarized in two of her paragraphs:

So where the hell do we go from here? After our son’s cynical-realist take on the March for Science, and after talking with a lot of thoughtful academics, here’s my proposal: We need to consider marching for intellectual humility. If we must march and chant anything in unison, how about this: We are uncertain! We are uncertain!

Because at the basis, what is supposed to make us different — what makes us most purposeful and useful — is knowing that we don’t know everything, knowing that we could be very incorrect — perhaps as incorrect as some very smart people before us have been. What’s been so wrong with the shout-downs from the left, and the shutdowns from the right, and the whole nightmare of university blanding — uh, I mean, branding — is the narrowing and cementing of what counts as true — the utter lack of intellectual humility. (She said, with certainty.) If we are going to take back the Ivory Tower — something I really think we need to do as much for our fellow persons as for ourselves — we need to remember that the reason we come together in universities, besides the hope of health insurance, is because it’s clear that one person alone can’t figure out anything all that important.

You can get a taste of the discursive writing here. I don’t disagree at all with Dreger’s message; it’s just that her point is buried in a piece about a lot of irrelevant stuff, and the center doesn’t hold.

But there’s one tidbit that did interest me (my emphasis):

I recently declined an offer from FIRE [the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education] to become one of their John Templeton Foundation-funded scholars. If you’re not familiar with the Templeton foundation, it has a history of promoting creationism; although FIRE assured me that I would not be bound by the funding source, I felt I had to say no, as I know how funding subtly influences work. (I only just found out that Templeton is supporting the FIRE faculty conference at which I’ll be giving the keynote; I’ll donate my honorarium to a nonprofit organization.) By the way, I may look so pure and noble, but I am fully aware that I can make all these principled stances because I’m married to a university administrator with a steady gig and because I am good at maintaining a fantasy wherein eventually my integrity pays off big.

Well, I was startled to see FIRE—an organization whose efforts I support because they fight against campus censorship and speech codes—getting big dosh from the Templeton Foundation—and it is big:


Talk about cognitive dissonance! Well, I suppose FIRE needs the dosh, but, like Dreger, philosopher Dan Dennett, and physicist Sean Caroll, I stay away from anything funded by Templeton, on the grounds that their ultimate mission is to blur the boundaries between science and religion. Dreger, however, may not be aware that Templeton no longer funds creationism or Intelligent Design, though they still try to sneak God into biology and physics, as well as to cast doubt whenever they can on modern evolutionary theory.

Despite this article, and her seeming ignorance of what Templeton does, I am still a big admirer of Dreger. After all, who else would do this?:

Kat Chow at NPR (and request for names)

October 7, 2017 • 10:45 am

You’re gonna get persiflage today as my neuronal activity has been diverted to a piece of writing which will provide an actual stipendiary emolument.

I was listening to National Public Radio news this morning, and I heard an item reported by someone who appeared to say, at the end, “This is Cat Chow reporting for NPR News.” I thought I’d heard wrong, but then thought, “No, it’s gotta be an Asian woman.” Sure enough, when I got back to a computer, I found Kat Chow!  Here she is:

Kat Chow. Photo by Ericka Cruz Guevarra/NPR

And a bio:

Kat Chow is a founding member of NPR’s Code Switch, an award-winning team that covers the complicated stories of race, ethnicity, and culture. She helps make new episodes for the Code Switch podcast, reports online features for Code Switch, and reports on-air pieces for NPR’s shows like Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Her work has led readers and listeners on explorations of the gendered and racialized double standards surrounding double-eyelid surgery, as well as the mysterious origins of a so-called “Oriental” riff – a word she’s also written a personal essay about. Much of her role revolves around finding new ways to build communities and tell stories, like @todayin1963 or #xculturelove.

I wonder how often people makes jokes about her name, just as I’ve often wondered how often New York Times reporter Gina Kolata gets jokes about drinks.

Here are some other mirth-inducing names I’ve come across in my life. The first one’s the best:

Dr. Harry Beaver, a gynecologist (of all things) in Northern Virginia who goes by “Harry”, not “Harold”. One of my friends was his patient. Can you imagine the jokes he had to hear from his colleagues? If you don’t believe the name, check the link.
Drs. Wolf and Mouser (the two vets in Virginia who ran a clinic where my family used to take its cats). I found Wolf’s obituary.
Ming Toy Epstein, the Chinese wife of a Jewish friend of my father.
Candy Cane (In my class at William and Mary)
Dreama Dawn Dean (a friend of one my college classmates)
Orbie R. Fleenor. On a road trip from Williamsburg, Virginia to Forth Worth, Texas, we saw this name on a billboard (I think he sold insurance). I also found his obituary.
Bayne Grubb (a friend of one of my college friends, Grubb came from Fries, Virginia)
China Alderman (another inhabitant of Fries; name pronounced “Chinee”; not Asian)
Pearl Ruby Diamond (found by a friend in the Richmond, Virginia phone book)
Queen Elizabeth Mozone (ditto)
Roosevelt McKnuckles (found by me in the Chicago phone book)
Bob Bugg, an entomology graduate student I knew at UC Davis

I’m sure the readers can come up with many more amusing names; put them below.

Cook County soda tax set for repeal

October 7, 2017 • 10:00 am

When I wrote last August about Cook County’s new and onerous tax on sodas and sweetened beverages—objecting strenuously on the grounds that 1. it’s part of the encroaching Nanny State, 2. it’s unfair because it includes diet sodas, which aren’t known to be harmful, and 3. it excluded egregiously sweetened coffees like the odious Starbuck’s pumpkin latte—I never expected to start a debate that went on for 250 comments. I can’t be arsed to reread them all again, but as I recall, debate was split right down the middle, with the quasi-libertarians, like me, squabbling with those who think the government has every right to tell its citizens what to eat and drink because, after all, taxpayers foot the medical bills.

The tax was high—a penny per ounce, which raised the price of a can of Coke by 12¢ and a 2-liter bottle of soda by 64. This is on top of a new 7¢ tax on each plastic bag provided by a store (a fee I don’t object to, as it’s fair, reduces litter, and you can just re-use your bags).

And this time the inhabitants of Chicago (in Cook County) became mad as hell and weren’t taking it any more. After severe pressure from locals, many of whom went over the border to Indiana to buy soda, The County Board Finance Committee is set to repeal the soda tax on Tuesday. As the Chicago Tribune reports:

Relentless public pressure appears to have doomed the Cook County soda tax. The County Board Finance Committee is scheduled to meet on Tuesday. As of Friday, 12 of the 17 commissioners had signed on to repeal it. They includes three who originally voted in favor of the tax and newcomer Dennis Deer, D-Chicago. That’s a veto-proof majority, folks.

At a penny per ounce on beverages laced with sugar or artificial sweeteners, the tax has reached deep into consumers’ pockets. And they understand the tax wasn’t about protecting public health. It was about feeding county government with more revenue.

The lesson? A dishonest tax is a deceit citizens won’t tolerate. Millions of dollars from soda tax supporter Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who financed television ads here supporting it, couldn’t prop up a lie. Have a Big Gulp on us, Mike.

I’m glad to hear this, as it nearly doubled the price of my daily diet soda, and I couldn’t understand why all the ads that favored the tax (showing pictures of dialysis machines and so on), never mentioned that diet sodas would also be taxed. Now I object to a huge tax on soda in general (and no tax on Starbucks’ Frappuccinos), but I really object to a so-called “health tax” on diet sodas that aren’t unhealthy. Although you can make a Nanny State case for taxing sodas (and I disagree with that), you can’t make any health-based case for taxing diet sodas.

As always, I don’t think the government should be in the business of regulating our diets. Cigarettes, well, maybe, because when used as intended they are dangerous; but many people drink soda in moderation. Are the rest of us going to be penalized because of a daily Coke or Diet Coke? I expect that many readers will mourn the passing of this tax, pointing out that dangerous foods should be taxed (why not a butter tax, then, or a hamburger tax?), but then we get into the business of the government micromanaging our diets. I won’t have that, and I’m glad the taxpayers pushed back on this one.