WHILE WE WHINGE ABOUT ANYTHING THEY DO:

Let’s Face It: Sanctions Are Warfare by Another Name (ASSAL RAD, MARCH 19, 2024, Inkstick)

At first glance, sanctions may appear like a useful alternative to war. Proponents of sanctions will argue that they avoid putting boots on the ground, thus protecting American servicemembers, they have the power to alter the behavior of targeted states, and prevent the devastation to innocent civilians caused by conventional warfare. But a deeper analysis of sanctions shows a starkly different picture.

Though there has certainly been evidence and literature that shows the limited efficacy of sanctions and their humanitarian costs on civilians, those findings are not always accessible to the broader public and tend to have a narrower focus.

And while many may recall the horror stories of how US sanctions hurt Iraqi children and civilians in the 1990s — especially the now infamous remarks by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stating that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children were “worth it” — sanctions policy is still not part of a wider political debate among the American public.

This discrepancy is due in part to the fact that sanctions are a silent killer. They do not draw the same media attention as bombs, dead bodies, and images of cities and homes turned to rubble — as we are seeing in Gaza now. To be clear, the enormous destruction and loss of life at such a rapid pace in Gaza should be the headline of every news outlet. But while sanctions can profoundly damage an entire society, the slow death they produce often goes unnoticed.

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS SPECIES:

Five Shocking Animal Hybrids That Truly Exist in Nature, From Narlugas to Grolar Bears to Coywolves (Carlyn Kranking, March 21, 2024, Smithsonian)

As humans, even we are the result of hybridization, as all people of non-African descent derive about 1 to 4 percent of their DNA from Neanderthals, while African people have about 0.5 percent Neanderthal DNA.

THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT IS NOT BUSINESS:

Javier Milei takes a chainsaw to Argentina’s state companies(Ciara Nugent, 3/21/24, Financial Times)

“All of these companies . . . spend 20 per cent of their budgets on delivering their specific goals, and 80 per cent on management costs,” Guillermo Francos, Milei’s interior minister, told Argentine television network LN+ last month. “We must strive for efficiency.”

ASAP, a local NGO tracking government finances, found Milei had cut transfers to state companies to 456bn pesos, or $535mn at the official exchange rate, in February — a 61 per cent decline in inflation-adjusted terms from the same month in 2023.

The roughly 40 state-owned companies provide public services including passenger rail, sewerage and energy. Most operated at a loss under previous governments. Now Milei’s administration has appointed new management at many of them, with a mandate to slash staff numbers and revamp their strategies.

Juan Cruz Díaz, managing director of the Cefeidas political consultancy, said: “There’s a lot of space to cut costs, make things more efficient, improve management [in Argentina’s state companies]. But the government has an ambition to move much more intensely. This is a question of principles as much as costs.”

IT COULD HARDLY BE MORE CONVENTIONAL:

Some therapists now offer unconventional form of treatment with surprising benefits: ‘It connects me to being human’ (Jenny Allison, March 21, 2024, The Cool Down)

Over the last several decades, but particularly the last several years, more and more psychotherapists, psychiatrists, therapists, counselors, and social workers have begun incorporating nature into their treatments. These approaches range from simply conducting talk therapy sessions outdoors to going hiking, going skiing, and even building fires. […]

Therapists agree — the technique shows promise, especially for people who are hesitant about traditional therapy or interested in something that doesn’t feel one-size-fits-all. It’s the reason why groups such as Maryland’s Center for Nature Informed Therapy or New York’s Boda Therapy have been growing in recent years.

“By blending the healing properties of the natural world with proven modalities such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Nature Informed Therapy addresses a wide range of mental health concerns, promoting overall well-being, life satisfaction, and a harmonious relationship with the environment,” the Center for Nature Informed Therapy’s website explains.

The benefits aren’t just anecdotal, either. A 2023 study of forest bathing, the Japanese practice of taking a mindful stroll in the woods, found that taking such walks significantly reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety. In fact, simply just hearing birdsong has been shown to soothe anxiety.

Get out of your own head.

NEOLIBERALISM JUST KEEPS FAILING UPWARDS:

Too Much: Three First World Problems (Art Carden, Mar. 21st, 2024, AIER)

Magnificently, free markets that have given us these “problems” also give us solutions. Capitalism comes to the rescue. Do you have a weight problem? Gyms cater to people of all budgets and with all sorts of fitness goals. There are cheap gyms like Planet Fitness (I’ve been a member for about seven years and honestly don’t use my membership that well) and more expensive gyms that are almost country clubs. Do you have too much stuff? There is a burgeoning market for professional organizers who will help you keep it all organized (this episode of EconTalk with Adam Minter, author of Secondhand, is fascinating). Too busy? We can’t all hire a personal assistant, but there is a similar market for companies that help people manage their projects and calendars (I’m a member of Asian Efficiency and was on their podcast in 2022).

Where our ancestors lived lives that were solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, the twenty-first century has us overwhelmed with connections, opportunities, and experiences.

SNOWFLAKES MELT:

The Crisis in Teaching Constitutional Theology (lee j. strang, 3/20/24, Law & Liberty)

I was surprised by Jesse Wegman’s essay, “The Crisis in Teaching Constitutional Law,” which purports to show that a newly “politicized” Supreme Court has exploded the possibility of teaching the foundation of our legal system. I hadn’t experienced a crisis teaching constitutional law and, to be honest, I was also a little embarrassed for my profession by some of the over-heated rhetoric by faculty Wegman interviewed. One of the interviewees even succumbed to sobbing: “While I was working on my syllabus for this course, I literally burst into tears.” The reason? “I couldn’t figure out how any of this makes sense.”

I haven’t had that problem; I haven’t cried even once while writing my syllabi, and it’s not for lack of teaching constitutional law. I have been teaching US constitutional law, constitutional interpretation, and Ohio constitutional law, since 2005, and I co-edit a casebook Federal Constitutional Law, so I’m familiar with what it takes to teach constitutional law. My primary pedagogical goal is to give my students the knowledge and tools they need to effectively advocate on their clients’ behalf. This body of knowledge includes the key cases and the doctrines that govern discrete areas of law, and the tools include the conventional building blocks of constitutional interpretation, such as textual, structural, and precedential arguments. I continue to do so four times a week this semester without any significant difficulty, and certainly without any greater difficulty compared to twenty years ago when I began teaching. […]

Wegman’s evidence supporting the purported crisis is exceedingly thin. At one point, Wegman complains that “these justices have moved quickly to upend decades of established precedent.” It’s not clear if Wegman is lamenting both the alacrity and the overruling of precedent, but even if it is both, it’s hard to take this “crisis” seriously, at least in context of the broad sweep of American history. Anyone who has taught one of the Warren Court’s many areas of doctrinal innovation knows that today’s Court is no more innovative than prior Courts. Moreover, as someone whose goal it is to teach all cases—including those challenging ones authored by Chief Justice Warren—charitably, I can confirm that any difficulty in teaching Bruen, Students for Fair Admissions, and the others Wegman complains of pales in comparison to the herculean task of painting Miranda v. Arizona (1966), as a good-faith interpretation of the Fifth Amendment.