World War III: The Gathering Storm

 A few months ago, the Russian invasion of Ukraine seemed to be moving in a dangerous direction in which nations might be choosing sides in the conflict.  The wealthy democracies were organizing support for Ukraine while autocracies were either professing neutrality or supporting Russia’s claim that the invasion was an act of self-defense.  The most troubling alliance seemed to be between Russia and China as they declared an unlimited friendship just prior to the invasion.  Both nations were determined to exercise power over their neighboring countries: Russia with military might, China with economic and political might.  The same nations supporting Ukraine were organizing for what might be called an economic war with China.  An alliance between Russia and China against a common enemy alliance would be a frightful situation.  In World War III: Alliances Are Forming; Weaponizing Food, Energy this situation was discussed in terms of a possible prelude to worldwide conflict.

Much has changed since then—and not for the better.  The United States, along with its NATO allies, have been able to provide Ukraine with superior armaments to those available to the Russian forces, and in sufficient supply to turn the tide and begin recapturing large sections of the territory lost in the initial invasion.  Russia embarrassed itself by picking a fight with a better-trained, better-led, and more-highly-motivated army.  However, Putin is not willing to endure defeat.  His only option is to play for time hoping that his enemies will lack the will to continue indefinitely.  Against Ukraine, he has mobilized a large number of new soldiers and began immediately rushing them to the front to provide poorly trained reinforcements.  Observers do not see that as a strategy likely to make much difference, but it may slow the Ukrainian advance. 

Putin’s mobilization strategy seems more like another attempt to extend the fighting through winter when he hopes his enemies will have their will broken by a long, cold, dark winter.  He is also trying to break states away from the NATO alliance and bring into the mix military assistance from his allies.  There appears to be more emphasis on destroying Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, particularly energy, than in holding occupied territory.  He attempted to create a natural gas shortage in Europe when the main pipeline from Russia was put out of commission by an explosion caused by an “unknown” terrorist nation.  He then offered Turkey the opportunity to become a hub for gas flow to Europe by building a new pipeline to its shoreline.  That seems a blatant attempt to further separate Turkey, not enthusiastic about NATO’s policy against Russia, from the other members of the alliance.  The most disturbing reason why Putin will follow a biding-time policy is the upcoming election in the United States.  He knows that Trump is an avowed admirer and wishes to rule the US in the same way he rules Russia.  There is a wing of the Republican Party that supports Trump and a move in that direction.  If the Republicans win either or both legislative branches, he knows he will be a step closer to seeing the end of support for Ukraine and the NATO alliance.

The development that most motivated the “Gathering Storm” theme was the entry of Iran into the fray by providing aid to Russia in the form of long-range weaponized drones.  The NATO countries benefited from the war by being able to judge the performance of their armaments in actual warfare without risking their own personnel.  This has been extremely useful.  The Iranians seem to wish the same opportunity.  They possess a large number of rockets and drones, enough to wage war against someone, and they are interested in seeing how they perform and if there are improvements needed.  Thus far, the drones have been effective in causing the desired damage, but countermeasures are also effective and may become even more so.

The assistance provided Russia by Iran is not yet a game-changer in Ukraine.  However, Israel, the likely target for Iran’s armaments buildup, must be watching closely.  The more effective Iran’s weapons appear in Ukraine, the more likely the Israelis must consider some sort of response.  Iran has already targeted Saudi energy infrastructure.  The Saudis would be even more vulnerable.  An Iran with a credible conventional armament threat against nations in the Middle East might be more upsetting to political stability than an Iran with a nuclear weapon.  Effectively, Putin’s war in Ukraine has spread to a highly unstable region.

In terms of potential worldwide conflict, China’s actions are critical.  Thus far, China’s support for Putin follows the initial assertion that Russia was under threat when it began the invasion.  There is no claim of direct support other than taking advantage of discounted prices for Russian oil.  The fear is that China could begin to provide direct military assistance to Russia in Ukraine, and/or take advantage of the Ukraine distraction to make an aggressive move in Asia.  If either move is made, it is not sure what would happen next, but the world would become a different place.

Meanwhile, worldwide problems that require worldwide attention will not be addressed.  While climate change grows unabated, more climate refugees will be created; increased levels and areas of conflict will create more war refugees; an already stumbling world economy will not benefit from conflicts, generating more economic refugees.

Stay tuned…

Get worried…

Vote for Democrats…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Worldwide Surge in Myopia

 In 2014 an article was encountered which discussed a dramatic increase in nearsightedness in school age children in Asia.  It indicated that this phenomenon was the result of high-intensity educational practices that left too little time for play outside in the sunlight.  It was the lack of sunlight that disturbed the normal growth of the eyes.  Recently, another article appeared stating that this phenomenon had spread throughout the developed world, its cause was more complicated than merely too much studying, and it was producing a significant rise in dangerous eye conditions.  Sarah Zhang produced The Myopia Generation: Why do so many kids need glasses now? for The Atlantic.

Zhang provides this perspective.

“In East and Southeast Asia, where this shift is most dramatic, the proportion of teenagers and young adults with myopia has jumped from roughly a quarter to more than 80 percent in just over half a century. In China, myopia is so prevalent that it has become a national-security concern: The military is worried about recruiting enough sharp-eyed pilots from among the country’s 1.4 billion people. Recent pandemic lockdowns seem to have made eyesight among Chinese children even worse.”

For years it was assumed this effect was somehow specific to Asian populations.  Now the worldwide nature has become apparent.

“In the U.S., 42 percent of 12-to-54-year-olds were nearsighted in the early 2000s—the last time a national survey of myopia was conducted—up from a quarter in the 1970s. Though more recent large-scale surveys are not available, when I asked eye doctors around the U.S. if they were seeing more nearsighted kids, the answers were: ‘Absolutely.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘No question about it’.”

“In Europe as well, young adults are more likely to need glasses for distance vision than their parents or grandparents are now. Some of the lowest rates of myopia are in developing countries in Africa and South America. But where Asia was once seen as an outlier, it’s now considered a harbinger. If current trends continue, one study estimates, half of the world’s population will be myopic by 2050.”

Experts continue to argue about precise details, but there is general agreement that the condition is caused by too much time inside focusing on near objects like books, phones, videogames and such, and too little time in the sunlight scanning distant objects. 

“In humans, the majority of babies are born farsighted. Our eyes start slightly too short, and they grow in childhood to the right length, then stop. This process has been finely calibrated over millions of years of evolution. But when the environmental signals don’t match what the eye has evolved to expect—whether that’s due to too much near work, not enough outdoor time, some combination of the two, or another factor—the eye just keeps growing. This process is irreversible.”

This phenomenon is more than a curiosity.  Myopia can lead to unhealthy eyes and even blindness.

“Nearsighted eyes become prone to serious problems like glaucoma and retinal detachment in middle age, conditions that can in turn cause permanent blindness. The risks start small but rise exponentially with higher prescriptions. The younger myopia starts, the worse the outlook. In 2019, the American Academy of Ophthalmology convened a task force to recognize myopia as an urgent global-health problem. As Michael Repka, an ophthalmology professor at Johns Hopkins University and the AAO’s medical director for government affairs, told me, ‘You’re trying to head off an epidemic of blindness that’s decades down the road’.”

For those interested in more information, try a National Institutes of Health publication: Myopia: a growing global problem with sight-threatening complications. 

Since the problem has been severe for the longest in Asia, that is where research has indicated that the problem can be alleviated by specific treatments to limit the elongation of the eyeball.

“Over the past two decades, eye doctors—mostly in Asia—have discovered that special lenses and eye drops can slow the progression of nearsightedness in children.”

These treatments seem to limit myopia development but not eliminate it.  And none have been approved by the FDA for use in myopia control.  However, if the trend continues, parents will demand them.

Children are already subject to competition between parents striving to provide the best for their offspring.  It is such competition in education and recreational pursuits that contributes to this surge in myopia.  Myopia will become another arena in which the well-off will seek to separate themselves from the masses by investing in these treatments.  And the cost of raising a child will again escalate.

Or, we could just demand that our children spend more time outdoors.

 

Are Females Better at Learning than Males?

 I have recently come across several books that provide detailed accounts of the lives, cultures, and idiosyncrasies of various animal species.  Several of these explicitly seek to promote the notion that we can learn something about ourselves by studying animals and their societies.  That is not such a wild hypothesis, especially if we limit comparisons to mammals.  We are all species with a shared evolutionary history, having the same body parts, and the same body chemistry.  The comparison can be refined by restricting comparison to just primates, or even to apes, or perhaps just to chimpanzees and bonobos, our evolutionary cousins.  If common traits appear in a number of related species, then those traits are likely to have a biological component. This has been a productive pursuit leading to interesting insights.  The most recent is the subject of this article.

Carl Safina produced the book Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace.  His intent is to imprint in the readers’ brains the realization that complex animals, including humans, require a long maturation period before they learn how to exist as a member of their species.  Each must learn how and what to eat, who is a danger and who isn’t, how to get along with members of their own sex, how to get along with members of the opposite sex, and what are the cultural rules of their society.  Learning about how animals learn is obviously a highly relevant pursuit.  In discussing this topic Safina provided the following intriguing observation.

“…there was a pattern: juvenile females were twice as likely to acquire the new skill as juvenile males or mature females.  Least likely of all to learn the new trick: adult males.  Across a wide swath of animals, the young, especially young females, appear to be the best learners (probably because young females generally divert less time to squabbling for dominance).

A middle-aged human teacher, sandwiched between a generation of boys and girls and a generation of aging parents, might read that statement and conclude it is generally consistent with their experience.  Safina’s claim raises a number of questions.  Is there a reason why quicker learning for females provides an evolutionary advantage?  Is there a reason why slower learning for males is not an evolutionary disadvantage?  Can this learning pattern be recognized in human societies?

Safina’s parenthetic comment provides a clue as to why young males and females are different: they generally have different roles in their societies, each with different learning requirements.  The most fundamental evolutionary demand is that of reproduction.  The nurturance of offspring is almost always the responsibility of the female.  The male’s most fundamental responsibility is merely to provide sperm.  In Of Chimps and Men: Males—What Are They Good For?, this quote from the female anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy was collected.

“To put men in perspective....across all 5,400 or so species of mammals in the world.  In the majority of them fathers do remarkably little beyond stake out territories, compete with other males, and mate with females.  With outlandish auditory and visual displays which often entail specially evolved weaponry, bellowing, barking, or roaring, males engage in fierce contests to route their competitors. Then ‘slam bam thank you ma’am’ and the inseminator is off.  Male caretaking is found in only a fraction of mammals.  By comparison, males in the order Primates stand out as paragons of nurturing, unusual for how much protection and even direct care of young they provide.”

The distribution of sperm to a female is not a simple task for a male.  There is a competition with other sperm-carrying males for access to any female, and then there is often the need to convince the female to be receptive to their approach.  These tasks produce cognitive demands on males, but ones different from those of the females.  Given that males are capable of disseminating sperm to a number of females, the individual female is more important to evolution than the individual male.  Nature wishes the female to learn all that it is necessary to nurture offspring by the time they become fertile.  If the male takes a little longer to learn what is necessary for it to compete for females there are plenty of other males around.  That consideration and the greater responsibilities of females for continuation of the species suggests that it would not be surprising if females evolved a more efficient learning capability

Safina suggests that male competition is a factor in their ability to learn, not necessarily in their ultimate cognitive capabilities.  Hrdy suggests that primates have evolved into species where males have the capability and, at least occasionally, the interest in assisting in caring for infants.  Does this aspect of primates tell us something about ourselves.  Safina claims that human evolution has produced a species that most closely resembles that of the chimpanzee.

“We aren’t ‘like apes.’  We are like chimpanzees.  Chimpanzees are obsessed with dominance and status within their group; we are obsessed with dominance and status within our group.  Chimpanzees oppress within their group; we oppress within our group.  Chimpanzee males may turn on their friends and beat their mates; human males may turn on their friends and beat their mates.  Chimpanzees and males are the only two ape species stuck dealing with familiar males as dangerous.  A gender that frequently creates lethal violence within our own communities makes chimpanzees and humans simply bizarre among group-living animals.  Chimpanzees don’t create a safe space; they create a stressful, tension-bound, politically encumbered social world for themselves to inhabit.  Which is what we do.  This behavioral package exists only in chimpanzees and humans.” 

Frans de Waal provides insight into primate characteristics in his book Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist.  He warns us that discerning differences in cognitive functioning between males and females is complicated because there are brain differences that come from genetics and there are brain differences that come from lived experience.  Nevertheless, there are clear differences in males and females from birth, with each tending towards activities, playing modes, that are part of preparing for their future responsibilities.  Male chimps seem immediately to anticipate competing with other males, both physically and mentally.

“I am always astonished at the inexhaustible energy with which young male apes romp around, jump up and down things, and go at each other, rolling over the ground with big laughing faces while they rip each other apart.  Known as rough and tumble play, it’s mostly fake assaults, wrestling, pushing, shoving, slapping, and gnawing on each other’s limbs while laughing.”

Male chimps are infamous for their fiercely competitive male hierarchies.  Females will form hierarchies as well, but they do it more efficiently without the continuous tension, leaving them to concentrate on their main function.

“Among primates, the orientation to vulnerable newborns and their substitutes, such as dolls or logs, is undoubtedly part of biology and more typical of females than males.”

“Young primate females are besotted with infants…Young females surround a new mother and try to get close to her infant.  They groom the mother and—if they are lucky—get to touch and inspect the infant…Females follow the mother wherever she goes.  They may play with the newborn and carry it if the mother lets them, which serves as a preparation for the moment when they get their own progeny.”

Male primates, including chimpanzees have demonstrated the tendency to nurture infants, but usually only when a mother is no longer available.  Otherwise, competition with other males is the constant concern.  Similarly for females, raising offspring is a constant, lifelong task.  Both biology and culture suggest that there are likely differences in the capabilities and interests in learning between males and females.

Do these tendencies translate to humans.  Richard V. Reeves provides an interesting perspective on male/female differences in an article for The Atlantic: Redshirt the Boys: Why boys should start school a year later than girls.  The term “redshirting” refers to the practice of having a young athlete, usually a freshman at a college, sit out a year so he/she can gain another year of physical maturation before competing.  This is normally for sports that demand considerable physical strength.

The basis for Reeves claim is the now well-known fact that males’ brain development occurs more slowly than that of females.  At the age of five or six, girls are more ready to sit and listen to a teacher than a boy who will soon start looking out the window wishing he was outside playing (mostly some form of competition with other boys).  This sounds a lot like Safina’s claim for male animals in general.  And as we shall see, Reeves claims that males don’t seem to ever catch up, at least not through tertiary formal schooling.

“…the fact that boys mature later than girls is one known to every parent, and certainly to every teacher. According to a Rand survey, teachers are three times more likely to delay entry for their own sons than their own daughters. The maturity gap is now demonstrated conclusively by neuroscience: Brain development follows a different trajectory for boys than it does for girls. But this fact is entirely ignored in broader education policy, even as boys fall further behind girls in the classroom.”

“On almost every measure of educational success from pre-K to postgrad, boys and young men now lag well behind their female classmates. The trend is so pronounced that it can result only from structural problems. Affluent parents and elite schools are tackling the issue by giving boys more time. But in fact it is boys from poorer backgrounds who struggle the most in the classroom, and these boys, who could benefit most from the gift of time, are the ones least likely to receive it. Public schools usually follow an industrial model, enrolling children automatically based on their birth date. Administrators in the public system rarely have the luxury of conversations with parents about school readiness.”

Reeves points to noncognitive factors such as diminished social and emotional controls in boys compared to girls to explain the difference in performance.  In short, girls are better able to focus on the task at hand rather than having their minds wander off topic 

“The problem of self-regulation is much more severe for boys than for girls. Flooded with testosterone, which drives up dopamine activity, teenage boys are more inclined to take risks and seek short-term rewards than girls are. Meanwhile, the parts of the brain associated with impulse control, planning, and future orientation are mostly in the prefrontal cortex—the so-called CEO of the brain—which matures about two years later in boys than in girls.”

“Other relevant centers of the brain follow suit. The cerebellum, for example, plays a role in ‘emotional, cognitive, and regulatory capacities,’ according to Gokcen Akyurek, an expert on executive functioning at Hacettepe University, in Turkey. It reaches full size at the age of 11 for girls, but not until age 15 for boys.” 

The subject here is not the problems of school bias that haunt boys.  The goal was to evaluate whether humans and other animals are all subject to similar biological factors that affect their development.  As far as evolution is concerned, females are the gender that has the most responsibility for the continuation of a species and natural selection made sure they had the attributes necessary to perform that critical function. 

Humans, for very good reasons, are trying to arrive at societies in which males and females can be considered essentially equal.  For thousands of years men had convinced themselves that women were less capable and should be denied academic opportunities.  The elimination of bias against females seems to be demonstrating that females are the better learners, and it is the males who may need some form of affirmative action.  Society will just have to learn how to deal with this.

 

The Supremacy of the Supreme Court: What Can Be Done

The recent overturn of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court has shaken our national politics and nearly destroyed the myth of the nine justices as impartial arbiters of constitutionality.  The manner in which each justice responds to issues before the court is so predictable that they seem little more than political operatives.  In fact, their reliability as such is what leads to their nomination to the court.  The Roe decision was ripe for a reversal because there was not a clear constitutional basis either for or against an abortion right.  So, politics of its time pushed for the initial Roe decision, current politics pushed against it.  Politics may yet swing back to it.

Such wavering in opinion is not the worst aspect of the Supreme Court.  Far worse is the power it has to overrule the wills of the executive and legislative branches.  The Court has long exercised the right to nullify laws and regulations produced by the other branches of government based on consistency with the Constitution.  This is referred to as judicial review.  Does the Constitution give five unelected justices the power to overrule the will of the people as expressed by the actions of their representatives?  No, that power is not expressly granted in the Constitution.  It was assumed by the court, meaning it gave itself that right in the 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision and it became a tradition.  The Constitution assumed the legislature would fill in the details of how the judicial branch would be organized, not that it would be dominated by it.  In fact, existence of judicial review was one of the things that most frightened the founding fathers.  Consider this constitutional interpretation written by Thomas Jefferson in 1820.

“You seem ... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps ... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.” 

The members of the Supreme Court have indeed become “despots.”  The overturn of Roe v. Wade, reprehensible as it was, was not the worst example of despotism.  For that we turn to Shelby County v. Holder.  When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965 it recognized that some regions had a history of discrimination used to limit access to voting, and that those regions could not be trusted to follow the law.  Such regions would not be allowed to change their voting rules and regulations unless the changes were approved first by federal authorities.  The law also included an algorithm for deciding which governments, state or local, required this oversight.  These provisions were put in place for five years, but were then renewed and occasionally updated, maintaining them operative over the years.  The Supreme Court ruled these provisions to be constitutional several times.  Finally, in 2006, Congress renewed these provisions for another 25 years, deciding that this oversight would continue to be necessary.  When Shelby County v. Holder came before the Court in 2013, it ruled, in a 5-4 decision, that it was improper for Congress to extend the law for such a period without reevaluating its algorithm.  Five justices told Congress that they knew how to formulate legislation better than elected representatives, and discarded legislation already approved by the Court multiple times.  The result was as Congress expected.  The distrusted regions immediately began developing all sorts of new voting restrictions. 

The Republican Party now owns the majority on the Supreme Court and is thrilled.  Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is appalled by the injustices.  Ian MacDougall provided some advice for them in a Harper’s Magazine article: Courting Disaster: Why liberals should give up on the judiciary. 

MacDougall argues that the Supreme Court has almost always been too conservative and even if the current crew is run off the court, the result will probably be a reversion to a gang still too conservative for progressive tastes.  The fundamental problem stems from assuming lawyers are the appropriate people to make justices.

“Law is a conservative profession by nature. It attracts rule followers. Its practitioners tend to come from the moneyed classes, and then cater to their interests. The courts, too, tilt in this direction. They’re principally backward-looking, with the authority to maintain the status quo or restore the status quo ante. Federal courts are generally given the prerogative to curtail government programs but not to create or expand them. Likewise, judges often block regulatory action but rarely order it. This asymmetry lends itself to libertarian outcomes more naturally than progressive ones.”

“Given this structural and sociological bias, it’s not surprising that for most of American history the courts have been aligned with political conservatives and capital—the elites, who had the most to lose from popular democratic rule.”

Legislators must do their job of legislating and regulating under the eye of the public.  And they are generally educated and intelligent persons quite capable of interpreting what is and what is not allowed by the Constitution.  If anyone misbehaves, the voters can throw the bums out.  Liberal and conservative initiatives compete on a level field—as long as the Supreme Court is left out of it.

So, what is available as a course of action for the disgruntled if Constitutional amendment is not practical?  Congress has plenty of power if it wishes to use it.

“The institutional risk for the court is that the political branches will ignore its edicts. The court’s only real power is uploading PDFs of its decisions to its website, and there exists a tradition, called departmentalism, that several presidents have invoked to minimize the court’s authority. After campaigning against the Dred Scott decision, for example, Lincoln held that the Supreme Court’s readings of the Constitution bound only the parties before it, not the other branches, which could adopt different interpretations to guide their own work. In defiance of Dred Scott’s ban, Lincoln’s government began issuing passports to black Americans.” 

“Minimizing judicial review of federal statutes is among the easier cases to make, since national legislation bears the imprimatur of both coordinate federal branches. Congress could, for example, strip the court’s appellate jurisdiction over constitutional challenges to federal statutes. It could impose supermajority or unanimous voting requirements to strike down federal law. It could deprive the justices of the power to select the cases they hear. It could slash the court’s staffing budget—the law clerks do much of the hard work in chambers—to reduce the number of cases the court can decide or simply to signal congressional displeasure. There are colorable constitutional objections to each of these proposals. But, “disappointing as it may be to legal experts,” the Yale legal historian Samuel Moyn told Biden’s panel, when reformist moments arrive, the rules and language of politics, not constitutional law, tend to govern the debate.”

MacDougall also makes the point that having the Supreme Court be the ultimate arbiter of political disputes lessens the probability that political disputes can be resolved at all, further exacerbating the situation. 

“Constitutionalism won’t redeem a dysfunctional politics. To the contrary, a functioning politics, actively engaged with the material concerns of the populace, is a precondition for taming the courts; without it, bringing them to heel is of limited value. ‘Law reflects but in no sense determines the moral worth of a society,’ the scholar Grant Gilmore argues at the conclusion of The Ages of American Law, his classic survey of American legal history. The worse a society’s politics, he claims, the more it will lean on the law to resolve deep-seated disagreements, which tends to deepen them further still. ‘In heaven there will be no law, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb,’ Gilmore writes. ‘In hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed’.” 

Something must be done to shake up the status quo.