The entire brain weighs three pounds (1.4 kg) and so is only a small percentage of an adult’s total body weight, typically 2%. But it consumes 20% of all the energy the body uses. Why? The perhaps oversimplified answer is that time is energy.
Neural communication is very rapid — it has to be — reaching speeds of over 300 miles per hour and with neurons communicating with one another hundreds of times per second. The voltage output of a single resting neuron is 70 millivolts, about the same as the line output of an iPod. If you could hook up a neuron to a pair of earbuds, you could actually hear its rhythmic output as a series of clicks.
[…]
Neurochemicals that control communication between neurons are manufactured in the brain itself. These include some relatively well-known ones such as serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and epinephrine, as well as acetylcholine, GABA, glutamate, and endocannabinoids. Chemicals are released in very specific locations and they act on specific synapses to change the flow of information in the brain. Manufacturing these chemicals, and dispersing them to regulate and modulate brain activity, requires energy — neurons are living cells with a metabolism, and they get that energy from glucose. No other tissue in the body relies solely on glucose for energy except the testes. (This is why men occasionally experience a battle for resources between their brains and their glands.)
Daniel J. Levitin, The Organized Mind, 2014.
October 16, 2015
QotD: This explains so much
October 15, 2015
Opponents of sentencing reform
Jacob Sullum points out a few misconceptions about sentencing reform:
Anderson, with Sessions’ help, manages to pack at least half a dozen serious misconceptions into a 375-word post. Let’s consider them one at a time.
Is “crime rising in America”? As Jesse Walker noted here last month, the latest FBI numbers show that violent and property crime both fell last year, continuing a “long decline” that began in the mid-1990s. Although some American cities have seen spikes in violent crime this year, it is not clear whether they represent a nationwide increase or, if so, whether that increase represents a reversal of recent trends or a blip.
Are police “increasingly under siege”? Last month my former Reason colleague Radley Balko, who writes about criminal justice for The Washington Post, reported that “2015 is on pace to see 35 felonious killings of police officers” and that “if that pace holds, this year would end with the second lowest number of murdered cops in decades.” As Jesse Walker pointed out here, such numbers have never deterred law-and-order types who propagate “the eternally recurring legend of a ‘war on cops.'”
Are drug traffickers “violent criminals”? Some are, but there is a clear distinction between stabbing or shooting someone and engaging in consensual transactions that Congress has arbitrarily decided to prohibit. Under current law, doing the latter is enough to trigger mandatory minimum sentences ranging from five years to life. By pretending there is no difference between violent predators and nonviolent drug offenders, opponents of reform make a hash out of any effort to focus criminal justice resources on the lawbreakers who pose the biggest threat to public safety.
Carbohydrates and fatty foods
Amy Alkon glories in her current dietary choices:
I spend my whole day eating fat — bacon fat, kale cooked in bacon fat, an omelet with cheese and pate, coffee made with half ‘n’ half; and steak, sausage, cheese, and green beans swimming in butter. Oh, also, a tablespoon of coconut oil warmed in half ‘n’ half a few times a day, whenever my brain feels like it’s on fire from intense activity.
I have never felt better.
And I’m never hungry the way I would get when I ate low-fat/high-carb — a hunger that made me feel like I could stop and devour a road sign (and anyone unlucky enough to be standing next to it at the time).
On the subject of hunger’s effect on diet maintenance, Gary Taubes has an op-ed in The New York Times that describes a study, taking place toward the end of World War Ii, that placed men on a starvation diet:
For 24 weeks, these men were semi-starved, fed not quite 1,600 calories a day of foods chosen to represent the fare of European famine areas: “whole-wheat bread, potatoes, cereals and considerable amounts of turnips and cabbage” with “token amounts” of meat and dairy.
As diets go, it was what nutritionists today would consider a low-calorie, and very low-fat diet, with only 17 percent of calories coming from fat.
There were horrible physical effects — and psychological ones. Two men had breakdowns. And then, when they were allowed to eat normally, they consumed “prodigious” amounts of food…eating themselves into “post-starvation obesity,” in the researchers’ words.
[…]
Questions like these about the relationship between calories, macronutrients and hunger have haunted nutrition and obesity research since the late 1940s. But rarely are they asked. We believe so implicitly in the rationale of eat less, move more, that we (at least those of us who are lean) will implicitly fault the obese for their failures to sustain a calorie-restricted regimen, without ever apparently asking ourselves whether we could sustain it either. I have a colleague who spent his research career studying hunger. Asking people to eat less, he says, is like asking them to breathe less. It sounds reasonable, so long as you don’t expect them to keep it up for long.
S.L.A. Marshall, Dave Grossman, and the “man is naturally peaceful” meme
The American military historian S.L.A. Marshall was perhaps best known for his book Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War, where he argued that American military training was insufficient to overcome most men’s natural hesitation to take another human life, even in intense combat situations. Dave Grossman is a modern military author who draws much of his conclusions from the initial work of Marshall. Grossman’s case is presented in his book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, which was reviewed by Robert Engen in an older issue of the Canadian Military Journal:
As a military historian, I am instinctively skeptical of any work or theory that claims to overturn all existing scholarship – indeed, overturn an entire academic discipline – in one fell swoop. In academic history, the field normally expands and evolves incrementally, based upon new research, rather than being completely overthrown periodically. While it is not impossible for such a revolution to take place and become accepted, extraordinary new research and evidence would need to be presented to back up these claims. Simply put, Grossman’s On Killing and its succeeding “killology” literature represent a potential revolution for military history, if his claims can stand up to scrutiny – especially the claim that throughout human history, most soldiers and people have been unable to kill one another.
I will be the first to acknowledge that Grossman has made positive contributions to the discipline. On Combat, in particular, contains wonderful insights on the physiology of combat that bear further study and incorporation within the discipline. However, Grossman’s current “killology” literature contains some serious problems, and there are some worrying flaws in the theories that are being preached as truth to the men and women of the Canadian Forces. Although much of Grossman’s work is credible, his proposed theories on the inability of human beings to kill one another, while optimistic, are not sufficiently reinforced to warrant uncritical acceptance. A reassessment of the value that this material holds for the Canadian military is necessary.
The evidence seems to indicate that, contrary to Grossman’s ideas, killing is a natural, if difficult, part of human behaviour, and that killology’s belief that soldiers and the population at large are only being able to kill as part of programmed behaviour (or as a symptom of mental illness) hinders our understanding of the actualities of warfare. A flawed understanding of how and why soldiers can kill is no more helpful to the study of military history than it is to practitioners of the military profession. More research in this area is required, and On Killing and On Combat should be treated as the starting points, rather than the culmination, of this process.
Europe: The First Crusade – V: Siege of Antioch – Extra History
Published on 5 Sep 2015
After their victory at the Battle of Dorylaeum, the Crusaders have an open path to Antioch and beyond that, Jerusalem. After the Sultan of Rum, Kilij Arslan, ordered the wells destroyed along their path, the Crusaders struggled through the desert and eventually decided to split their forces. Tancred and Baldwin set off towards Tarsus and Tancred tricked the Turkish garrison into surrendering to him, but Baldwin claimed the city for himself and broke his oath to the Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenos. Tensions between the two lead to another confrontation in the next city, after which Baldwin abandoned the Crusade entirely and conned his way into becoming the Count of Edessa. Tancred meanwhile returned to the main force of Crusaders, who were besieging Antioch. When a force led by Bohemond and Robert of Flanders met Antioch’s Turkish reinforcements on a foraging mission, they attacked them and scared them away. Then Bohemond tricked the Byzantine general into leaving as well, and threatened to leave himself unless the Crusaders let him keep Antioch. They had no choice but to agree to keep their forces together. With this assurance, Bohemond engineered the capture of Antioch: he bribed a Turkish commander to let them through the gates. The Crusaders massacred the people of Antioch when the city fell, but they had no time to rest after their victory: a huge Turkish army was already bearing down on them.
QotD: No matter what, you’re never really “ready” for kids
Apparently tech companies are offering egg freezing as a benefit to their employees. There’s some suspicion among women I know that this is supposed to help/force women in technology balance family and career by delaying childbirth — it’s not a good time in your late 20s and early 30s, so freeze those eggs and have kids when you’re ready.
What I haven’t seen anyone explain is when, exactly, you’ll be ready. For most people, your 40s and early 50s are your peak earning years — is that really going to be a good time to meet that special someone, or finally step back to invest some time in having kids? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m already noticing that I have a lot less energy than I used to. It’s not that I can’t get my work done or anything like that. But it used to be that if I had to travel for six days straight and then deliver a 2,500-word essay on the 7th, I could dial up my reserves and power through it — miserable and cranky, to be sure, but functioning. Then one day, around the time I turned 40, I dialed down for more power and there just … wasn’t any. My body informed me that it was tired, and my brain would not be doing any more work today, and we were going to sleep whether I liked it or not.
This is — as friends who have done it freely remark — a difficult age to be taking on your first newborn. I can’t even imagine trying the same feat 10 years from now, when my joints will be even creakier and my reserves even more depleted. So I’m skeptical that women who are having trouble combining work and career now will really find it much easier to do within any reasonable time frame. Is all this egg freezing actually going to expand the choices of most of the women who use it, or will it just be an expensive way to choose career over family without realizing that you’re making that choice?
Megan McArdle, “Will Freezing Your Eggs Help Your Career?”, Bloomberg View, 2014-02-16.
October 14, 2015
Toyota’s ISIS problem
In The Diplomat, Franz-Stefan Gady looks at the problem for Toyota because their vehicles have become the favourites of ISIS and other terrorist groups:
The United States has launched an investigation to determine how the terror group ISIS was able to acquire a large number of Toyota pickup trucks and SUVs ABC News reported this week.
Japanese car manufacturer Toyota, the world’s second-largest auto maker, has pledged full cooperation with U.S. authorities and is “supporting” the inquiry led by the Terror Financing division of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
“We briefed Treasury on Toyota’s supply chains in the Middle East and the procedures that Toyota has in place to protect supply chain integrity,” according to a D.C.-based spokesperson of Toyota. However, “it is impossible for Toyota to completely control indirect or illegal channels through which our vehicles could be misappropriated,” he added.
According to Toyota sales data, the number of Hilux and Land Cruisers sold tripled from 6,000 in Iraq in 2011 to 18,000 sold in 2013. However, sales dropped to 13,000 in 2014.
Toyota Hilux pickup trucks – a lightweight virtually indestructible vehicle – have been prominently featured in various ISIS propaganda videos and played an important role in ISIS’ conquests of large stretches of Iraqi territory last summer by acting as a force multiplier.
Armed with a .50 caliber machine gun the Hilux truck’s maneuverability provided insurgents quickly with close-range fire support during their attacks. Back in 2010, the counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen referred to the Hilux as “a modern version of light cavalry. They move weapons into positions to fire, and can also shift people around very quickly, with a quick dismount.”
Full disclosure: I’m currently driving a ten-year-old Toyota pickup truck (a Tacoma, which I think is the North American version of the Hilux). My next vehicle is likely to be another Toyota pickup truck. They may not be technically indestructible, but I’ve been very impressed with the performance and durability of my particular vehicle.
Playboy finally reads the writing on the virtual wall
Nick Gillespie says “thanks for the mammaries” to Playboy magazine:
Well, it was either really changing things up or going bankrupt for Playboy, the men’s mag that published its first issue way, way back in 1953.
Inside the pages of that first issue, Marilyn Monroe was seen posing with, as she once put it, “nothing on but the radio.” Its circulation peaked at 5.6 million in the mid-1970s and now comes in at maybe 800,000 nowadays. That’s still an enviable number but like a lot of other, older mags (think Time, Newsweek), Playboy is a shadow of its former self in every possible way: financially, journalistically, culturally.
The New York Times reports and the Interwebz weeps that come next March, the nudes are out as part of a thorough redesign of one of the most influential mags in American history. Yes, Playboy helped to mainstream nudity and, more important, start frank conversations about sex in a time of button-down sensibilities. Yes, Playboy photoshopped the hell out of its pneumatic centerfolds and playmates, launching innumerable careers and an even-higher number of eating disorders among women and unrealistic expectations among men.
In many ways a very progressive outlet, Playboy also showcased some of the worst, most-retrograde elements of the patriarchy that slowly and surely lost its power over the 20th century. For all of the nipples and the semi-arty beaver shots, it was far slower than National Geographic to showcase the full range of human diversity when it came to naked ladies, unless your idea of diversity only ranged from the girls of the SEC to the girls of Big Ten. It published a ton of great and famous authors with a capital A and set the standard in post-war America for the Big Interview, sitting down with everyone from Ayn Rand to Timothy Leary to William Shockley to Jimmy Carter (who notoriously admitted lusting “in his heart”) for incredibly extensive and intensive Q&As that simply (and sadly) don’t gone anymore.
The joke was that you’d only read Playboy for the articles … yet the articles were actually quite good for the most part. By the time I saw my first issue of Playboy (October 1972, if I remember correctly [edit: off by a year … it was 1971]), it was already being seen as stodgy and “conservative” compared to more explicit and raunchier competitors.
Update: Megan McArdle contrasts the Playboy Man with his modern-day “successor”, the Pick-Up Artist:
In its heyday among the mod generation, the writing essentially peddled the fantasy of being a more sedentary James Bond: a sophisticated and urbane man about town, drowning in lady friends. The New York Times quotes Hefner’s first editor’s letter, which sketches the demographic he envisioned: “If you’re a man between the ages of 18 and 80, Playboy is meant for you. … We enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph, and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex. …”
Playboy Man was, in short, a connoisseur of the upper-middlebrow au courant, at least enough to carry on an hour or so of really good cocktail party conversation. He liked to give cocktail parties, too, though they might have only one guest. His hi-fi system was the latest, his little black book crammed with the names of willing and attractive females. He was, we might note, the type of person who really doesn’t have a lot of spare time to spend looking at Playboy centerfolds.
[…]
It’s interesting to contrast Playboy Man with the modern incarnation that has taken his place: the Pickup Artist. Both present versions of the same message: follow this code, and you’ll be successful with women. (For some values of the word “successful,” anyway.) But Playboy Man was supposed to achieve this through mastering a certain body of “cool” knowledge, through becoming the sort of person who might impress even those he does not intend to woo. The Playboy fantasy was of being the kind of gent who naturally attracts women because he’s so with it, while the Pickup Artist fantasy is more like a teenager playing a video game: You press the buttons in the right sequence and — yes! — your character unlocks the next level.
Sexual conquest has, in other words, moved down market, as pornography did, first with the introduction of raunchier Playboy competitors, and then in the move to the Internet, where sheer volume trumps production values. Playboy spoke to the moment between two sexual moralities: the age when sex was forbidden, and the age when sex became ubiquitous. In the moment between, the sight of men openly pursuing lots of sex had a sort of glamour, and a status, that it has now entirely lost. I don’t say that the pursuit has stopped. But the charmingly dangerous character of the “wolf” has now been supplanted by an assortment of derisive terms that I cannot repeat here in a family-friendly column. For an adult man to admit that he spends a lot of time thinking about how to score is as gauche now as it was in 1900, though for entirely different reasons.
Canadian defence … a still-relevant view from ten years ago
Instapundit linked to a ten-year-old post at Albion’s Seedlings, and I noticed that the next post there is still pretty much dead-on in describing why Canada’s military is in the state we still see today. Spoiler: the post is titled “Was Canada Ever Serious? Militia and Military Since Confederation“:
Initial chapters [of Canadian Brass: The Making of a Professional Army 1860-1939 by Stephen Harris, 1988] consolidate the early periods of Canadian military history as the British military staff digested the new geopolitical realities demonstrated during the American Civil War. Canada was to be spun loose politically in 1867 but its foreign policy and defense were to remain a very strange hybrid well into the 20th century. The WW1 period in Canadian Brass is divided into pre-war, a Sam Hughes [Militia Minister] WW1 period, and a post-Hughes WW1 period. An interbellum period gets thorough coverage and then WW2 is broken out into separate Military Planning, and Training & Education chapters.
The rather shocking message of this book is that the Canadian military has been the constant butt of political interference during the last 150 years except for two brief periods: WW2 proper, and 1951-1964. During virtually all other periods of Canadian history, the permanent (professional) military forces have been starved of funds, denigrated in public by all and sundry, and then ignored completely during mobilization for wartime. The only time in Canadian history that professional pre-mobilization plans were actually used was WW2. In all other eras, professional plans were ignored and politicians turned to various militia cronies to assemble, train, lead, and transport Canadian troops.
[…]
The author suggests, therefore, that lack of professionalism in the organization of the military led to unnecessary political crises (specifically the split between Quebec and English-speaking Canada), and, in the case of the First World War, the needless slaughter of the initial Canadian divisions (because they were led by totally unqualified militia officers with political connections). The WW1 crisis created by Minister of Militia Sam Hughes was the result of a totally mythical and exaggerated memory of militia superiority in the War of 1812 and the Fenian raids of 1866, and careful news management out of the Boer War. Militia were held to be a superior in all ways to a professional force, moral and martial. Government money for militias (urban and especially rural) was a traditional source of political patronage in Canada, frustrating British military advisers and Governor-Generals for literally generations (and ruining many Brit careers in the process). Such patronage methodically starved the professional units in a nascent professional Canadian Army of training, equipment, facilities, pensions, wages and prestige. The result was a professional army that wasn’t and an oblivious overconfident citizen-soldier militia that was destined for a horrific introduction to modern war.
The casualty situation got so bad by the late fall of 1916 that Hughes was dismissed, and a new generation of Canadian officers (all political appointees but survivors of the savage Darwinian selection at the front) began to lead, and promote their junior officers out of the ranks. The impact on morale and military success from early 1917 to the end of the First World War were dramatic. Canadian reputations for combat effectiveness essentially came out of this period.
[…]
It’s clear, in retrospect, that Canadian politicians and the Canadian public have had a long-standing expectation that the British (and then the US) were going to bail them out in any serious military situation. As a result, the professional Canadian military was seen as simply another source of political largesse for the party in power. It never had to be effective, and post-1964, it actually was designed not to be used at all … unification of the three services (Army, Navy, Air Force), and endless UN peace-keeping missions were an effective way to strip combat effectiveness and combat equipment out of the Canadian military. Harris provides all the necessary context and information for that conclusion but is politic enough to avoid much further commentary.
He does writes an interesting epilogue that delicately skirts around those post-1939 issues … and avoids touching the “third rail” of military bilingualism introduced in the 60s, which further degraded esprit de corps and combat effectiveness. After all, Mr. Harris was essentially writing about his own Cold War employer at the time of publication (1988), and probably wanted to keep his job. Nonetheless, it’s pretty clear that the Liberal dismantlement of the conventional Canadian military (after tactical nukes appeared in Europe in the 60s) was yet another iteration of the political manipulation of the permanent military and a return of the good old days of “jobs for the boys.” The sorry state of today’s Canadian military (a small but excellent antiterrorist force [JTF2] to protect the elite in Ottawa, and a sprinkle of blue helmet cannon fodder without adequate air transport) is therefore very much part of a proud Canadian political tradition stretching back 135 years. It’s not a mistake. It’s on purpose.
Ten years on, we don’t do the UN peacekeeping stuff to any great extent, but even with a “pro-military” government in power for most of that time, the Canadian Armed Forces are still starved for resources and up-to-date equipment (and procurement is still seen as a way to spread government money around to “deserving” regions rather than a way of getting the best tools for the money). Thanks to our unique strategic situation, Canada can still be a military free-loader — and glories in it.
Introduction to the Competitive Firm
Published on 18 Mar 2015
How does a company really behave? We tend to assume profit — the bottom line — is the main motivation for a firm’s actions. For most firms most of the time, this is a good assumption, especially in a competitive market. With this video, you will explore how a company maximizes profit in a competitive environment where there are many buyers and sellers.
This idea comes with a few surprises. Does a company really control what price it sets? Or does the market determine the price? Here’s a clue. If you owned an oil well, even your mother wouldn’t buy your oil if she could get the same oil somewhere else for less money. Watch and find out why.
QotD: The temptations of power
The late Jean-Claude Duvalier, better known as Baby Doc, played only a small part in my life. I arrived in Haiti for the first time two years after his downfall, during the presidency of the eminently respectable academic, Leslie Manigat, who was soon to be removed by army coup. The pudgy bovine face of Baby Doc still adorned the worn and grubby banknotes in circulation, and I could not help but feel a certain personal sympathy for so eminently unintelligent and naturally undistinguished a person, thrust into a prominence and power he never sought, and actually wanted to avoid.
It cannot have been easy to be president for life from the age of 19, especially since he had a bossy mother, sister, and wife, all of whom plotted and intrigued for power. And if I had been in his shoes at that age, I think — being more intelligent than Baby Doc and therefore having my head more stuffed with adolescent nonsense — I should have been far worse even than he.
Theodore Dalrymple, “The Despot Within”, Taki’s Magazine, 2014-10-12.
October 13, 2015
Art From The Apocalypse – Otto Dix I WHO DID WHAT IN WW 1
Published on 12 Oct 2015
Otto Dix was a German artist known for his unforgiving depiction of the Great War and the society of Weimar Republic. His works in the series Der Krieg (The War) are among the most well known depictions of the horrors of war. Together with George Grosz and Max Beckmann, he is considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity).
Gary Johnson might end up being the “non-weird candidate for whom America has been waiting”
The US Libertarian Party’s nomination race won’t make much of a splash in the media (for the usual reasons all minor parties encounter), but if Gary Johnson wins the nomination again he might be the most normal candidate in 2016:
Gary Johnson, not yet an official 2016 Libertarian Party candidate for president, spoke to the two-day LibertyFest 2015 at the Warsaw hall in the Williamsburg neighborhood of New York City this weekend. He defended freedom in all its forms, from the unregulated entrepreneurship of Uber and Lyft to marijuana, reduced taxes, and reduced warfare.
Yet even I — an anarcho-capitalist, as you may recall — am beginning to wonder if it’s necessary to emphasize philosophy for Johnson to shine in the strange setting of the 2016 race. I mean, if the Republicans end up offering someone as odd as Trump or Carson, and the Democrats offer a criminal such as Clinton or a socialist such as Sanders … couldn’t Johnson plausibly just run as the non-weird candidate for whom America has been waiting?
And believe me, I know how strange it sounds to be talking about the Libertarian as the normal one for a change. (Jimmy McMillan, the “Rent Is Too Damn High” guy, spoke on the same stage a couple hours before Johnson, and it’s not clear McMillan is even a full-fledged libertarian — maybe more of a Georgist? Or just an interesting, earnest character?)
Let us assume for the sake of argument that Johnson beats other would-be Libertarian Party nominees including Austin Petersen, who gave an energetic LibertyFest speech about mobilizing libertarian activists as if for war and hopes he’ll one day get the chance to institute a flat tax. Much as Libertarians usually worry about having a candidate who lacks the guts to push their philosophy in a full-throated way (witness their occasional wariness about Rand Paul), might this be a good year in which to skip ideology and use mere sanity as a wedge issue?
