Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist and anti-woke crusader who has stirred controversy and garnered praise, opprobrium, and ridicule for his pronouncements on postmodernism, neo-Marxism, gender, morality, and the rules of successful living, has donned a new pundit hat to opine on Russia, Ukraine, the war, and the West. The maverick professor lays out his thoughts on the subject in a 50-minute video that garnered over 1.4 million views in the week since it was posted; the transcript can be found on the Daily Wire, where Peterson is now a regular contributor. Unfortunately, the main conclusion one can derive from the video is that creeping pro-Kremlin sentiment is a real problem in certain social conservative quartersand its an ugly thing.

Peterson starts with the obligatory I think what Putin has done is unconscionable disclaimer, and he even throws in a denunciation of the collusion of the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. But it doesnt take long to reach the inevitable but: Theres a need, Peterson says, to deeply understand the motive forces for this war in order to end it and prevent similar future conflicts.

Fair enough. Peterson mentions his March 4 interview with foreign policy scholar Frederick Kagan, who put forward the thesis that Vladimir Putin is a prototypical authoritarianor even a thug in the Hitlerian moldand that Russias invasion of Ukraine is the result of Putins personal desire for empire and power as well as an expression of the imperial expansionism that typified the Soviet Union. But that explanation apparently isnt good enough for Peterson, so he turns to University of Chicago realist John Mearsheimers 2015 lecture, Why Ukraine is the Wests Fault, for an alternative perspective more sympathetic to Russias concerns.

Peterson gravely notes that he was concerned that Mearsheimer might be a Russian apologist, but thankfully that does not seem to be the case. Then he moves on to the apologetics: NATO and EU expansionism into Ukraine . . . has already and will continue to pose an intolerable threat to the Russians, who view Ukraine both as an integral part of the broader Russian sphere of interest and as a necessary buffer between the Europe that has invaded Russia to terrible effect in 1812 and 1941. (By the way: It wasnt Europe that invaded Russia on either of those occasions; it was Napoleon and Hitler, who also invaded numerous countries in Western Europe. If every country that repeatedly got invaded over the course of its history is entitled to an obedient buffer country on its borders, its going to be buffers all around.)

The blame NATO defense of Russias actions is, as Ive written before, bogus. But one part of Petersons elaboration on this argument is so striking that it deserves to be quoted in full:

Mearsheimer states, starkly (and this explains a fair bit of Putins potential motivation) that Russia would rather see Ukraine destroyed, razed to the ground, than comfortably ensconced in the Western sphere of influence.

If true, I would say that this doesnt exactly contradict the authoritarian with a bent for imperial expansionism (or even thug in the Hitlerian mold) take on Putins actions. Neither does a third point Peterson then brings up: that Russia sees Ukraine as a threat to its primarily petro-funded economy, particularly in relation to the European market. Sorry, but if you invade another country and slaughter people to protect your oil and gas trade, it might not make you Hitlerian, but it definitely makes you the baddies.

But even these explanations dont suffice for Peterson, who wants to find the wokeness angle in order to tie all this to his hobbyhorse. Here, according to Peterson, is the real story:

Putin regards the current West as decadent to the point of absolute untrustworthiness, particularly on the cultural and religious front. . . . And whether he believes this or notand I believe he doeshe is certainly able and willing to use the story of our degeneration to make his people wary of us and to convince them of the necessity of his leadership and to unite them in supporting his actions in Ukraine. . . .

And are we degenerate, in a profoundly threatening manner? I think the answer to that may well be yes. The idea that we are ensconced in a culture war has become a rhetorical commonplace. How serious is that war? Is it serious enough to increase the probability that Russia, say, will be motivated to invade and potentially incapacitate Ukraine merely to keep the pathological West out of that country, which is a key part of the historically Russian sphere of influence?

Petersons example of Western degeneracy is Ketanji Brown Jacksons elevation to the Supreme Courtnot only because she was picked on the basis of her race and sex (since Biden had explicitly narrowed the pool to black women), but because, during her confirmation hearings, she punted on the question What is a woman? by answering, Im not a biologist. Peterson concedes that it was a gotcha question, but then concludes that it doesnt matter: The fact that woke ideology simultaneously makes being a woman one of two key criteria for a Supreme Court seat and muddies the meaning of woman means that it violates the principle of non-contradiction and makes our culture irredeemably irrational.

What does this have to do with Russia and Ukraine? In Petersons view, the Russians see woke ideology as a new version of the Communist quest to remake human nature and tell themselves something like this:

Those Westerners are so out of their mindpossessed by the very same ideas that destroyed us for a century (and didnt they?)that we simply cannot trust them. Those Westerners are so out of their mind that a devastated but neutral Ukraine is preferable to a functional bordering state aligned with the US and Europe. Those Westerners are so out of their mind that well push the world to the brink of a nuclear war and potentially beyond to keep them off our doorstep. Because weve been there before and were not going back.

Peterson does stress once again that Putin himself may or may not believe this and that, regardless of his sincerity, he is weaponizing the War on Wokeness to promote his imperial and self-aggrandizing goals. However, he still maintains that the real key to solving the Russia/Ukraine problem lies in winning the civil war in the West by defeating the radical ideas of Marxist inheritance that are currently destabilizing our societiesand that, as long as those ideas dominate, American and Western support for freedom in Ukraine is nothing but shallow moral posturing.

Where to begin?

The notion that the Wests moral standing vis--vis Russia in 2022 is undercut by some uniquely terrible moral degeneracy and irrationality does not pass the laugh test. For instance, as David Frenchpoints out,for a good part of the Cold War the United States tolerated not only racial segregation but the often-violent oppression and disenfranchisement of black Americans in the Southern states. I daresay this was in drastic contradiction with the principles of freedom and democracy we were upholding in opposition to Soviet Communism. Does Peterson really think that putting Justice Jackson on the Supreme Court after a selection process limited to black women is more reprehensible than excluding blacks (and, in many cases, women) from a wide range of high-level public positions?

(Incidentally, Putin has also invoked the history of racial injustice in the United States as proof of American hypocrisy on human rights, continuing the Soviet-era tradition of such whataboutism. Authoritarians will weaponize whatever they can!)

One could also point out that Putins obsession with keeping Ukraine out the Wests clutches goes back to circa 2004which is to say, it started about a decade before what liberal pundit Matt Yglesias dubbed the Great Awokening: the shift to the new progressive focus and framework on race, gender, and other identities.

Whats more, if we want to talk about contradiction and non-contradiction, Petersons own plea for Western civilizational renewaland his claim that such a renewal will ensure a more friendly disposition from the Russian political establishmentis profoundly incoherent. He asserts, for instance, that the radical ideas he finds so corrosive must be defeated not only by adherents of traditional religious values but by classic liberals [and] small-c conservatives defending the heritage of the Enlightenment. But he also argues that Russia sees itself as championing a religiously ordered society built on Russian Orthodox values; he even cites Dostoyevskys A Writers Diary, a collection of political newsletters, as an expression of this philosophy. Leaving aside the repellent passages on the Jewish Question in that work, there is no doubt whatsoever that Dostoyevsky loathed and feared degenerate Western influence at a time when Western liberalism was about 150 years away from going woke.

As the cherry on top, Peterson mentions the neofascist crank Aleksandr Dugin as a genuine philosopher whose influence on Putin supposedly shows the Russian leaders authentic interest in philosophical and theological matters. (Peterson had previously discussed Dugins alleged status as Putins adviser, and his hostility to Western liberalism as a driver of materialistic hyper-individuality, in a 2015 lecture.) Im not even sure whats more important to point out here: that Dugins philosophy is virulently hostile to even to the least woke varieties of Western liberalism, or that Dugin is either a kooky, occultism-obsessed prophet of Russian imperialism or a mega-troll whose public persona is a kind of performance art. (Of course, in truly postmodern fashion, it is possible that he is some combination of both.) The bottom line is that if you take Dugin seriously as a philosopher, youve well and truly jumped the shark.

Whether or not Western liberalism should return to its more classical roots is a topic for another day. In any case, such a pivot cannot be the answer to the current crisis in Ukraine if only because of how long it would take to happen. But Peterson has some short-term proposals, too:

Perhaps the declaration of Ukraine as a neutral state for a minimum period of twenty years.

Perhaps a new election in Ukraine subject to ratification by joint Russian-Western observers.

Perhaps a pledge on the part of the West to not offer to Ukraine any membership in NATO or the EU that is either not simultaneously offered to Russia or moving forward on terms acceptable to Russia.

Peterson concedes that his suggestions might be wrong and even dreadfully nave, which is probably the most accurate thing he says in this entire piece. Consider their substance: His first proposal would directly reward Russia for its naked aggression.

The second is an arrangement Russia would only accept if it were facing imminent, ignominious defeat and desperately needed a deal to save face. (Any election in Ukraine today would hand a resounding victory to pro-NATO, anti-Russia candidates even in those parts of the country where pro-Russia sentiment and skepticism toward NATO were widespread before the war.)

As for the third proposal, it too amounts to a reward for Russias invasion, granting the country a veto on Ukrainian membership not only in NATO but in the European Union. Whats more, by Petersons logic, an offer of NATO or EU membership to Russia should be seen as a menace to the country, not a friendly overture: Didnt he just tell us that Russia is going to war in Ukraine partly to keep the scourge of Western liberal decadence from its door?

The reality is that, for all the Wests culture-war problems, the defense of Ukraine is both the most genuinely liberal cause (in the classic sense of the word) and the most genuinely moral cause that exists in our public and political space right now. And, be it reflexive contrarianism, pandering to his fan base, or genuine conviction, Peterson now finds himself on the wrong side of that causewhich arguably reduces all his talk of defending of Western civilization and upholding strict moral standards of good and evil to, yes, shallow posturing. The worrying question, given his large fan base and his status as a conservative celebrity, is how many people will follow him there.

Read the original:

Jordan Petersons Pro-Putin Punditry - The Bulwark

1. How Jordan Peterson Ruined His Image in Islam  New Lines Magazine
2. A Christian Woman's Remarks on Jordan Peterson  Juicy Ecumenism
3. Skeletor recites Jordan Peterson's essay about his Twitter suspension  Boing Boing
4. Jordan Peterson Gives Important Advice to Christian Churches. Should We Take It?  Daily Citizen
5. 'Grifter' Really Is the Only Word to Use for Jordan Peterson  The Daily Beast
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

Read the original:

How Jordan Peterson Ruined His Image in Islam - New Lines Magazine

COMMENTARY: In their defense of Rubins decision to become a father by artificial means, these conservatives concede one of the most offensive premises of transgenderism.

I had a hard time watching Jordan Petersons conversation with Dave Rubin about gay parenting and transgenderism. Im deeply disappointed in them. Ill cut right to the chase. These men claim to be opposed to transgenderism. However, in their defense of Dave Rubins decision to become a father by artificial means, they concede one of the most offensive premises of transgenderism. They evidently believe that with enough money, medical technology and legal support from the state, a man can do anything a woman can do. They are literally erasing women, while congratulating themselves on how thoughtful and profound and conservative they are.

I predict this cognitive dissonance will not last indefinitely. Within five years, Peterson and Rubin will repent: they will either repent of their opposition to transgenderism or they will repent of their support for gay parenting.

David Rubin and his civilly married partner, David Janet, want to become fathers. Rubin learned from his association with Jordan Peterson that parenthood is one of the keys to maturation and a fully actualized life. But neither of the two Davids is willing to have a sexual relationship with women. Indeed, by defining themselves as gay, they publicly attest that they do not respond sexually to a woman. So, they have contracted with a series of women to assist them in achieving this maturation milestone of fatherhood.

When I wrote my first article on this subject, I knew that they had purchased eggs from a woman they selected from a catalogue. And I knew that they had rented the services of two different women for surrogacy, one to gestate the embryos created with each of the mens sperm.

I didnt know until watching this video conversation, that the men have thoroughly studied the benefits of breastfeeding. They have two industrial freezers full of pumped breast milk. Where did this breast milk come from? The gestational mothers? Some other women? Do the two Davids think it matters where it came from? We also learn that these fathers are planning to involve female role models in their childrens lives, including their female relatives and night nurses.

So lets tally this up. Weve got the genetic mother, the gestational mother, the night nurses, the female relatives and no doubt, other female caregivers. But we have no legally recognized mother. Not one of these women has a legally recognized permanent place in the childrens lives. All of them are legal strangers to the children. This is literally female erasure the exact thing that so many female opponents of transgenderism have passionately decried.

These men have broken motherhood, the most fundamental human relationship, into a series of functions. Theyve transformed mother, an organic, integrated personal reality, into something artificial, scattered and impersonal.

Middle-of-the-night-breastfeeding illustrates what I mean. Although I have mothered more than 10 children, (depending on how you count: long story) I have only had the privilege of nursing one of those children. I can tell you from that experience: there is nothing like breastfeeding. My whole body relaxed into the care of that child. Getting up in the middle of the night was actually a joy. Nothing else mattered but me and the baby. In the words of one of our favorite lullabies, Things less important, will just have to keep, while I rockabye my baby to sleep. I was heartbroken when my daughter gave up breastfeeding at the age of five months.

(By the way, young Miss Chloe Cole, in her testimony to the harms of attempting to change her sex, made this very point. She realized that she would never be able to nurse a baby, because she had amputated her breasts. But I digress.)

I need not point out that the nice ladies the Davids engage to pump the breast milk and bottle feed the babies in the middle of the night are not going to have that attachment experience. Nor are the babies going to have the same bonding experience they would have with their natural mother nursing them from her breasts.

Natural motherhood integrates the genetic mother, gestational mother, nursing mother, care-giving mother, legally-recognized mother all into one person. Ordinary motherhood is natural, with nothing artificial, or dare I say, man-made. Most of all, ordinary motherhood is personal. My personal identity is crucial to my child and her identity is crucial to me. We are irreplaceable to each other, unlike the collection of interchangeable parts the surrogacy process relies upon. Does a man of Jordan Petersons caliber seriously believe these babies are going to be unscathed by this process?

Peterson seems as if he really knows better. He even said, You guys have the resources to navigate all this. Well, that is true. They do have resources. But a man shouldnt need extraordinary resources to be a good father. The first duty of fatherhood is to love your childs mother. Indeed, that is the ordinary way of becoming a father in the first place. David Rubin has already failed in this most basic duty. He will not be able to fully repair this breach, no matter how rich or smart he is, no matter how much society rallies around him.

All these theories are about to come crashing down around their heads in a few short weeks. The babies will arrive in their lives, changing them forever. All these mens beliefs will be tested by reality. These men wont be able to keep their carefully balanced, nuanced positions indefinitely.

That is why I predict repentance of one sort or another is in these mens futures. On one hand, they may try to brazen it out. I was so wrong to be mean to trans people, the sex of the body isnt so important after all, my partner is a wonderful mother-figure, Ive grown, blah, blah, blah. Or the two Davids are going to be astonished by fatherhood. Jordon Peterson is going to see the problems in real life and in real time. They are going to see that asking a male partner to play the female nurturing role is much more complicated than they expected. One of the children will raise a question or react or behave in some way that will prompt these men to ask, What have I done? At that point, all their past life decisions will come into question.

For me, an infertility crisis in my mid-thirties prompted me to start walking back my life decisions. I ended up reconsidering everything Id done and believed since about the age of 14. I came back to the Church. I can testify: there is life on the other side of repentance. I pray these men take the right path.

See the original post here:

Memo to Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin: Mothers Are Irreplaceable - National Catholic Register

On the intellectual bankruptcy of moral equivalence

By David French

The Third Rail examines the disputes that divide America. Sign up to get it in your inbox.

Theres a pattern emerging in parts of the right. It goes something like this. Yes, Russia is wrong to invade Ukraine, but And what follows the but is invariably an avalanche of excuse-making and false moral equivalence. NATO provoked Russia, Ukraine provoked Russia, orand this is my favoriteWestern wokeism provoked Russia.

Earlier this week the extraordinarily popular Canadian professor Jordan Peterson released a lengthy (and immediately viral) video that represented the virtual platonic form of the argument that Russia is wrong, but If you have a spare hour, Id urge you to watch his entire lecture, if only to understand a view you may not hear much in your daily life.

I want to focus on a specific claim by Petersonthat Russia has not only gone to war to protect itself from what he describes as Western degeneracy, but that our alleged degeneracy robs the West of the moral high ground in the conflict. Heres a key quote:

And what is this degeneracy? Peterson talks about radical gender ideology, the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson (yes, really), and her reluctance to define a woman during her confirmation hearings. Heres more Peterson:

Petersons moral equivalence does not (yet) hold majority Republican support. While Republicans are less likely to support Ukraine in the conflict than Democratsand less likely to support strict economic sanctions against Russia and sending military support to Ukrainestrong majorities still oppose Vladimir Putin.

Petersons beliefs, however, are still worth addressing, and not just because they undermine American support for an ally that is directly confronting one of our nations chief geopolitical foes. His beliefs also lead to a sense of unjustified existential despair about the state of our own civilization and culture.

In short, while the West has problems, it is not degenerate by any reasonable historical measure, and there is no reasonable comparison between the virtue of NATO and Russia. To argue otherwise is to be ignorant or to engage in gravely deficient moral reasoning.

The rights disproportionate commitment to moral equivalence in the Russia-Ukraine war is explained partly by pure contrarianism (opposing anything the elite supports) and partly by a profoundly negative view of modern Western cultural life, and a prewar view of Putin as a muscular representative of specifically anti-woke Christian nationalism.

Theres no question that Putin has forged a close relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church, but that is an indictment of the Russian Church, not an endorsement of Putin. Hes a brutal war criminal who employed his military in indiscriminate attacks against civilians in the wars in Chechnya and Syria well before the wholesale slaughter in Ukraine.

Moreover, its hardly the case that Russia itself is a hotbed of religious fervor. Its far more secular than the United States (53 percent of Americans say religion is very important in their lives, versus only 16 percent of Russians). Russia has a substantially higher murder rate than every member of NATO, including the United States. It suppresses religious freedom, and it has one of the highest measured abortion rates in the world.

Is Russia defending itself against Western degeneracy and protecting the Christian faith? No, its distorting and appropriating Christianity to inflict its own pathological criminality on a peaceful nation and its innocent people.

Petersons critique of the West as degenerate or insane rests largely on the existence of radical gender ideology and illiberal wokeness that does have profound influence in a number of key Western cultural institutions, including the academy, large corporations, and much of the mainstream press.

Yet the Western-protected regime of individual liberty and the rule of law not only protects its citizens from the worst excesses of authoritarians on the left and the right; it protects the mechanisms of internal critique that can and do lead to reform. Moreover, even with wokeness abroad in the land, NATO countries remain among the best places in the history of the world to build a life and raise a family.

Neither America nor its Western allies have ever been perfect. Weve always been profoundly flawed. Indeed, the United States that fought World War II was far more degenerate or pathological than it is today. We liberated Europe from Nazi tyranny and Asia from Japanese despotism at the same time that we maintained an apartheid-like Jim Crow regime in the South.

But that did not render the moral high ground in the Second World War up for the most serious debate.

Ive long been a participant in the American culture war. I was a pro-life and religious-liberty litigator for more than 20 years before I became a journalist. I also know that its easy to lose perspective when you spend too much time immersed in domestic disputes. Most of us, however, get jolted back to reality when we see the true face of aggressive, authoritarian evil. A clash over whether to use the word woman or a person with the capacity for pregnancy is a moral and philosophical dispute that can be mediated through the instruments of liberal democracy.

A Russian cruise missile launched into an apartment building, by contrast, represents a truly different order of depravity. A nation or culture does not have to be perfect to be right, and make no mistakein the clash between the war criminal in the Kremlin and Ukraine and its NATO allies, the true moral high ground could not be more clear.

The rest is here:

Jordan Peterson Is Wrong About Russia, and the West - The Atlantic

A visual representation of the souls of my children when they start lecturing me about my failings.

I finally worked up the wherewithal to start looking at my pictures from our trip. Matt had the better idea of posting big chunks of them every Sunday and then going back offline, whereas I thought, foolishly, that I would come home and sort them and then post them systematically. I added Post Pictures to my List Of All The Things I Will Do. I got home and started working down the list. Part of my magical thinking was that if I could just get to the end of my inbox, and do all the other miscellaneous admin (thats what I call it to myself) that always sits there, like the laundry, weighing on my conscience, I would be really happy.

So, I kid you not, I did just that (less the pictures). I coped with my inbox. I went through and paid all kinds of school fees. I found my stamps and mailed my letters. Iseriously, sit down and put down your iced coffeegot to the end of my list. I crossed the last thing off on Monday night and then sat back and waited for the flood of relief and joy that I knew, as certainly as night follows day, would overwhelm me.

But nothing happened. Nothing at all, except that I looked back at my phone and found I had three new tasks magically appear in my email that I didnt even know were going to hit me. And I was just as anxious as ever. And no feelings of happiness or relief whatsoever illuminated my soul. It was a huge and terrible disappointment.

And so, in the spirit of Solomon and all his experiments in temporal joy, let me just warn you off even trying.Do Not Devote Yourself To Admin. Dont. Dont make responding to email your full-time job. Youll do it all and youll still be stressed out. I mean, Im not suggesting you not do it at all, but, as the person who wrote Deep Work said (I think), shove that baby back in the corner. Admin should be confined to a small box, like a yapping angry dog. It shouldnt be let out to wander around and take over everything. Like the laundry, which should live in its own dismal room and be shoved back in whenever it spills out or whenever anything more interesting comes along, email and other sorts of tasks should be forced back into their desolating corner in favor of more satisfying pursuits, like pulling up weeds, arguing with your children about Jordan Peterson, and trying to recreate the Coffee With Milk that you ordered once in Portugal.

Not a very good picture, I admit, but stopping to fix it is really beyond my abilities right now. To put any nice pictures here Im going to have to go back and resize everything and Im not sure how. Hopefully, it isnt as complicated as it looks. Meanwhile, as I said, my children have had a lot of things to say about Jordan Peterson. Apparently, a lot of them watched his short lecture to the church (I havent had a chance to yet) and were both bemused and incensed. For some reason, most of them are big JP fans. The oldest is working her way through his lectures on the Bible and can often be found, headphones plugged in, smiling and shaking her head. They are interesting, but, as she says, he so often misses the point. As to what the church should be doing, my children wanted to give Jordan Peterson some advice. Of course, he is right that young men are being cast off and that the church should particularly invite them in and affirm their biological realities. But (and this is the advice bit) it would be helpful if Professor Peterson would take the trouble to discover what the church is for. And he could do that by reading more Christian writers andthey were quite adamant about thisgiving in and going to church himself. If CS Lewis could submit himself to the mediocrity of the C of E on an ordinary Sunday morning, and Jesus himself could go to the Synagogue for his whole earthly lifeand my goodness, what must it be like to sit there and listen to one dubious and confused biblical exposition after another, oh wait, God does it still! He is there in every worship service in every corner of every country through all timethan even Jordan Peterson can, and should, go. Because it is only by going and submitting ones impressive intellect to the mercies and grace of the ordinary gathering of faithful worshippers that the point of the exercise gradually becomes clear. And that is that Jesus saves us from ourselves and unites us to him. Thats a message that young men need, but also older ones, and women as well.

My children pointed their fingers at me and practically shoutedGo to church, Jordan. The young menand young womenof today who listen to you insist.

And now, if you will excuse me, Im going to go have my morning walk in this hideous thousand-degree weather. And after that, I have no idea. I probably need to go buy a latte since I cant make a good one myself and I cant crop my pictures either. Have a nice day!

See the rest here:

Wisdom of the Ages: Email, Jordan Peterson, and a Latte - Patheos

This is a column by Morgan Campbell, who writes opinion for CBC Sports.For more information aboutCBC's Opinion section, please see theFAQ.

What can you do in one one-thousandth of a second?

Voluntarily, I mean.

Hang up on a robocall?

Block a forex/crypto grifter's follow request on Instagram?

Hit "don't recommend channel" when YouTube's algorithm serves up a Joe Rogan/Jordan Peterson collaboration?

Many of us could make many of those decisions in a flash, but not in .001 seconds. In the real world, thousandths of a second barely exist. Anything we can measure that closely is a matter of reflex or luck.

But in the alternate dimension known as the World Athletics Championships, one one-thousandth of a second can determine the difference between a great start and an illegal one;a keen competitor and a cheater.

WATCH | Making the case to abolish the false start rule in track and field:

Witness Devon Allen, the future Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver and the third-fastest 110-metre hurdler in history, looking to win a medal in Eugene, Ore., where he competed as a collegian at the University of Oregon. He registered a reaction time of .101 seconds in his semifinal on Sunday. A fast, but legal, result, according to the World Athletics rulebook, in line with the governing body's ideas about the fastest possible reaction to a starter's pistol.

In the final, Allen reacted in .099 seconds a negligible difference everywhere but in World Athletics' guidelines, which state that any figure faster than .10 seconds is a false start, and the result of an athlete anticipating the gun. Common sense says that Allen could not possibly have decided to react one or two thousandths of a second faster in the final, but World Athletics' zero-tolerance rules said he had to go. He offered a mild protest, but officials hustled him away from the start line, and the TVbroadcast maintained its brisk pace.

Allen was the third athlete Sunday night to earn a false-start disqualification. Julien Alfred (reaction time: .095) and TyNia Gaither (.093) were both bounced from their 100msemis for reacting after the gun, but before the rule book says they should have.

Veteran track coach P.J. Vazel tallied every reaction time in every men's 100mdash and 110mhurdles race at every world championships since 2011. All those rounds produced 30 reaction times faster than .115 seconds but 25 of them came this week. Most years, that number is zero.

WATCH |American hurdler Devon Allen speaks on false start at worlds:

Is this a new trend?

The track and field equivalent of a crime wave?

Do those numbers show us that sprinters are getting tripped up trying to game the false-start system, or is something else happening?

I'm not a gambler, but if I was, I would bet on "something else."

The huge year-to-year jump in almost-illegal reaction times is a strong hint that the new equipment is more sensitive.

We know something is happening with the starting blocks in Eugene.

They slipped out from under Canadian Aaron Brown's feet during the 200mprelims a fairly common mishap at high school meets, but nearly unheard-of at the world level.

After his own first-round race, American Noah Lyles described how these blocks differed from the ones at virtually every other high-level meet. The foot pads are articulated, the lower segment fixed in place, while the upper part can crane up or down.

"These are completely different blocks," he told reporters after his prelim. "That lip in the front really throws off everything. I was adjusting my blocks way longer than normal."

The stat doesn't measure a runner's exit from the blocks; just the pressure sprinters exert with their feet prior to taking their first step. If the equipment is more sensitive, it'll register that pressure sooner, and likely shave a few thousandths off a lot of people's reaction times, even if athletes are reacting the same way they always have.

So what looks like an increase in the number of sprinters trying to jump the gun is probably just a more accurate picture of their hair-trigger reflexes in action.

WATCH | Breaking down Devon Allen's historic 110m hurdle time:

It's not like fixing a camera on an intersection to record people running red lights. Think instead of football prospects moving from hand-timed 40-yard dashes to electronically-measured sprints. The switch turns 4.1s into 4.3s instantly, and sticker shock hits prospects hard. Doesn't mean they got slower. They just have more precise information.

None of it is an issue if World Athletics revised its reaction-time guidelines. But its one-and-done false start rule, already co-existing uneasily with the razor's-edge nature of high-level sprinting, isn't compatible with hyper-sensitive equipment. In his post-disqualification comments Allen hinted at the only logical, yet completely nonsensical compromise.

"I'll make sure I kind of react not as fast next time," he told reporters on Sunday.

Sometimes we see that type of discretion among officials at fairly high-level meets. A blatant false start still triggers a DQ, but an inadvertent one often prompts officials to reset the field and start again. As we've discussed elsewhere, spectators don't fill seats to watch marshalls marshall.

But at the Olympics and the World Championships, an involuntary twitch in the starting blocks could get a sprinter tossed from a final, and a fast reaction to the gun could trigger a rule that negates an entire season of hard work for a medal contender as Allen, Alfred, Gaither, and even Usain Bolt can attest.

World Athletics itself suspects the situation is untenable, or at at least unfair. Scientists the governing body commissioned in 2009 to study reaction times suggested lowering the red line to .08 seconds to account for extremely, but feasibly, fast reactions to the starting gun.

Thirteen years is more than a career for any sprinter not named Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, yet in all that time World Athletics hasn't budged on its reaction time standard. So we're stuck with a rule that has existed since the 1960s, even as training, technology and athletes advance.

Every person in every sprint race is subject to that rule, so in that sense the playing field is level.

But the numbers tell you it's a long way from fair.

Read more:

Time has come for World Athletics to budge from its outmoded policy on false starts - CBC Sports

On the internet, youll find extreme dieters of all types, and many of them will swear to you that theirs is the only healthy way for a human to eat. At one end of the spectrum, theres Jordan Peterson with his carnivore diet, consisting of nothing but beef, salt and water. At the other, frugivore diets pushed by YouTubers and their ilk are not just vegan and raw but almost entirely made up of fresh fruit. And then, of course, we have the classic and unapologetically restrictive weight loss programs like the cabbage soup diet, the Master Cleanse (aka the lemonade diet), and the currently trendy Mono Diet, where you eat only one food.

Advocates for highly restrictive diets like these tend to massively overemphasize the benefits of their approved food while seriously exaggerating the drawbacks of all other foods. But these are only the most extreme examples of a supposed wellness culture that makes huge generalizations and routinely manipulates or straight-up ignores scientific evidence. Unfortunately, this approach ends up polluting even those conversations that do have some legitimate basisfor instance, veganism.

There are plenty of health benefits to a plant-based diet, and unlike the above examples, its not even necessarily a particularly restrictive dieteven nonvegans and nonvegetarians who eat primarily plant-based can reap the benefits. But the unfortunate truth is that like most things on the internet, a grain of truth gets stretched far beyond the bounds of what science can actually prove.

Its not hard to imagine why some voices for veganism might exaggerate or even fabricate health-related claims. The animal agriculture industry enacts gruesome violence against animals, as well as many of its laborers and, of course, the health of the planet. So if health is what will compel people to change their diets in a way thats beneficial for animals and the environment, its easy to see why some activists and influencers would push nutritional facts as the most effective avenue to help end the industry.

But ultimately, misinformation is only going to harm the movements credibility. Veganism is a more widespread idea in our society now than ever beforewe cant afford to risk causing folks to dismiss the whole thing as bunk. And all of this misinformation, exaggeration, and cherry-picking is a shame, because it obscures the actual strong evidence of the benefits of eating less meat, eggs, or dairy: lower risk of heart disease, stroke, and several types of cancer, to name just a few.

Regrettably, conversations around veganism tend to be rife with pseudoscience. Its not hard to find vegan influencers who spout unproven theories as though they were fact, utilize confusing and misguided logic, or say things that are plainly falselike that a vegan diet can change your eye color. Even actual medical doctors have been known to make dramatic and shaky claims, such as that a single meal high in animal fat can cripple a persons arteries, citing one single, decades-old study that featured just 10 subjects and no control group.

Youll hear people saying that nothing less than a 100% plant-based diet can be considered optimally healthy, when the reality is, we just dont have the data to back that up. Sure, there are plenty of studies that do support the general idea that plant-based eating is healthy in one way or another, and plenty of them are recent and use reliable methodologies. But even good data can be woefully misinterpreted. Correlation often gets mistaken for causation, and its difficultif not impossibleto isolate very specific inputs and outcomes (like, does cheese cause cancer?) because human biology and lifestyles are complicated.

Heres an example: James Beard Award-winning Washington Post columnist Tamar Haspel points to this Bloomberg article, the headline of which boldly claims, One Avocado a Week Cuts Risk of Heart Disease by 20%. Which sounds huge! But a closer look reveals that the study only demonstrates an association between avocados and heart disease, not a causal relationship. Do avocados cut the risk of heart disease, or do people who make overall heart-healthy lifestyle choices just eat a lot of avocados? Based on this study alone, we cant say. Any conclusion is, at best, a loose interpretation of the facts.

And the issues with nutritional science as we know it today go even deeper. For one thing, many of these studies (including the avocado one) rely on self-reported information from study participants. Thats putting a lot of faith in regular people to accurately and honestly measure their own eating habits, which human beings are famously bad at. When the input data is already in question, its hard to trust any conclusions drawn from it.

Even putting that aside, observational studies dont allow scientists to randomize their study subjects. If were just noting what real people are actually doing, we cant separate the elements we want to examinefor instance, meat consumptionfrom other factors like income, education, gender, smoking and drinking behavior, and what else they eat. As a result, the kind of information we get from these studies is imprecise;and unless the results include very dramatic, statistically significant trends, its risky to extrapolate much from them.

But getting the kind of data we could reliably work with is more or less impossible. To truly control a study, researchers would have to literally control everything eaten by hundreds of participants (or more) over a period of years, in order to eliminate all (or even most) potential confounding factors. Real human lives are just too complicated to regiment the way a true lab study requires.

Furthermore, the biological world is just more complicated than wed like to think. Different people have different nutritional needs. For people with certain gastrointestinal conditions, eating fully vegan just isnt feasible. But even barring that, human bodies are unique and one person may not process a particular food in the exact way another person would. With that in mind, one-size-fits-all health advice of any kind should probably be subject to some heavy skepticism. Given all of this, its no wonder that doctors, nutritionists, researchers, and other credentialed expertsnot to mention third party interpreters of research, like journalists and other media figurestend to give diverse, often contradictory advice.

Meanwhile, an alarming portion of the population, and even of the scientific community, are apparently indifferent to nutritional science altogether. Fewer than 20% of medical schools in the U.S. have a single required course on nutrition, and the majority of medical schools teach less than 25 hours of nutrition education in the four years it takes to complete an MD program. All this, despite the fact that diet-related diseasemuch as heart disease and type 2 diabetesare among the leading causes of death in the U.S. today.

Our diet-obsessed culture is constantly searching for a magic bullet to fix all the diet-related problems we face. We try complicated, often punishing, and sometimes even dangerous methods to, ostensibly, get healthy (often a euphemism for lose weight), based on so-called empirical evidence thats shaky at best. The fact is, nutritional science just isnt at a point where we can confidently dole out sweeping directives on how people should eat. Sure, there are some points that the medical community has reached some degree of consensus on: The American Heart Association tells us that eating a lot of meat is not a healthy way to lose weight, especially for folks who have or are at risk for heart disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says to avoid processed food and sugary drinks in order to lower our risk of heart disease and stroke. And the American Cancer Society tells us to eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

Eat your veggies and avoid soda are probably not groundbreaking bits of advice for most people, and theyre certainly not going to sell any flashy new diet books. Anyone whos spouting granular advice on exactly what and what not to eat is probably operating more on faith than facts. Perhaps a 100% vegan diet is the healthiest way for humans to eat, after allbut we just dont know for sure. Its past time vegan influencers and activists embrace that scientific reality. The credibility of veganism, and the future of a more sustainable and compassionate world, depend on it.

See the original post:

Vegans need to stop exaggerating the health benefits of a plant-based diet - Fast Company

We are called to be completely faithful.

That line stood out to me in Cardinal Thomas Collins homily on June 26. These words inspired me to step back and reflect on what total commitment to our Catholic faith looks like in a society tempting us to compromise on our Christian values.

Various ideologies are all over the airwaves. There are consequences if you dont fall in line with the prevailing social doctrine.

Collins, continuing his homily, said as believers we are called to expect rejection, in which in some cases means death; in our part of the world it means marginalization and laughter, and maybe being fired if you hold clear to your Christian principles in the face of woke attitude if thats a word I dont know if thats a word, but its a reality.

In short, its difficult. Being true and uncompromising presents a huge drawback, tainting the individual in the eyes of the society. The pressure and allure to conform can cause you to betray your beliefs and moral standing just so that you will not fall into this despair. You will be the black sheep and outlaw. Very few feel comfortable inviting such characters into their world.

In a recent podcast, Canadian clinical psychologist and YouTube personality Jordan Peterson interviewed Rod Dreher about his new book, Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents. The conversation begins with Dreher explaining his inspiration for the book named after the famous words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian novelist who equates lies with ideology, the illusion that human nature and society can be reshaped to predetermined specifications.

Solzhenitsyn wrote these words in an essay for his followers, stating they cant say what they think in totalitarian Russia. What we can do is refuse to say what we do not think. Its the power that we have: to refuse to speak lies, to refuse to assent to lies when they are spoken around us.

Dreher spoke to Soviet and Czechoslovakian migrants tabout the similarities of todays American political atmosphere with the communist leadership from which they fled. One migrant was a former prisoner tortured for four years before release simply because she refused to stop going to church.The mother spoke of the things that she had left behind and what she sees now.

Dreher recalled her testimony to Peterson: It is the fact that people are terrified to say what they really think. She was talking about that people could lose their businesses, could lose their jobs simplify for having the wrong opinion.

These all seem to be part of a totalitarianism mindset.

Dreher observed it wasnt quite the totalitarianism described in the likes of George Orwells 1984.

I have come to understand that this is a softer form, a different form. Its a totalitarianism built on comfort, and status, and well-being. We cant really see it because we are looking to the past to tell us what totalitarianism is.

We are living in a new world now. A world that advocates for freedom of ideologies and speech, but only if it adheres and advances a particular societal vision.

Collins urged us to counteract this prevailing force with complete intentional discipleship and to be ardent though gentle servants of The Lord.

Embrace this wisdom my fellow believers. We must speak the truth as hard and difficult as it may be. There are all kinds of agendas designed to make living openly Christian difficult and uncomfortable. So, we must learn and study Gods Holy Word to arm and defend ourselves.

Its no longer just a matter of believing, its being purposeful. In our world of confusion and lies, the least that we can do is know the truth, understand the truth and stand by the truth.

(Ducepec, 23, is a recent Bachelor of Science graduate from the University of Toronto)

Originally posted here:

Stand by and for the truth - The Catholic Register

Last Monday, the roof of the House of Commons chamber contrived to leak. This adds to the long list of hazards asbestos, sewage leaks, crumbling masonry, fire risk that I described in the Observer two weeks ago, along with the mind-bending 7bn-13bn estimate for putting them right. The daunting scale of the problem prompts in many an understandable reaction, that it would be better to relocate parliament to an entirely new building. The palace, though, as a globally famous monument, will still have to be restored, whether or not MPs and lords continue to work there.

An alternative way to reduce cost would be to think the unthinkable about heritage. For a feature of the building is the sheer expanse of intricate interior detail, much of which is never seen by the public. It is like a big fat Victorian novel that doesnt know when to stop. Is it essential to the buildings beauty and significance that absolutely all this detail be retained and reconstructed? Does world heritage truly need mile after mile of Victorian double-flock wallpaper and linenfold oak panelling? The answer, from parliamentarians, would probably be a scandalised yes, we do need to keep it all. In which case, subject to robust scrutiny of the costings, the bill will have to be paid.

I hesitate to spend time and space on Jordan Peterson, the Socrates of toxic masculinity, the Abraham for incels, whose attention-seeking statements are the intellectual equivalent of a small boy making farting noises. But, given that he is still treated respectfully by leading newspapers, it feels useful to point out how repulsive are some of his views.

He argues in a recent video that Putins war on Ukraine is sort-of justified. Russians think, he claims, that those westerners are so out of their mind, that a devastated but neutral Ukraine is preferable to a functional bordering state aligned with the US and Europe. Russians believe they have a moral duty to oppose the degenerate ideas of the west, he concludes. Theres something about that that is not wrong.

Peterson bases his argument on a refusal by the supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to define the word woman, even though her own womanhood, given that Biden had promised to appoint someone female and black to the court, was a factor in her nomination.

This refusal, says Peterson, breached the principle of non-contradiction, which means that anyone who goes along with it has become insane. Thus, somehow, the bombing of maternity hospitals and shopping malls, the murder, torture and rape of civilians, the obliteration of cities are almost reasonable, not to mention Putins well-known perversions of truth and logic. I am sorry, but who is the degenerate here?

A 285-metre tower has been proposed for 55 Bishopsgate in the City of London, potentially the third tallest in the country. Its your usual big glassy thing, except for a pattern of curving lines on its exterior. The developer Schroders Capital says it resembles the shape of a leaf, echoing its meaningful connections to natural elements.

This puts it in the same category of supertall plant metaphors as the thankfully cancelled plan to build a giant tulip in the City. There is only one possible response: no, its not a leaf. Its nothing like a leaf. It doesnt function like a leaf. It is 74,000 square metres of office space and it is banal to call it something else.

Rowan Moore is the Observers architecture correspondent

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The Palace of Westminster must be saved, but not the vast expanse of interior detail - The Guardian

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

When people say the Secret Services job is to protect the president, they usually mean it in a physical waynot a political one.

But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

The motto of the U.S. Secret Service is Worthy of trust and confidence, but recently the agency has put that to the test.

This week, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, which houses the Secret Service, informed Congress that the agency had deleted text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021the day before and day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol that sought to disrupt the certification of Joe Bidens victory in the 2020 presidential electioneven though the inspector generals office had requested that they be preserved as part of an investigation. (The IG is an in-house watchdog, whose powers are furnished by Congress.) The agency claimed that the messages were lost because of a device-replacement program, according to the inspector generals letter, which was first reported by The Intercept.

A spokesperson angrily contested the insinuation that the Secret Service maliciously deleted text messages following a request, claiming it had independently begun resetting devices in January 2021 and saying that no texts were actually lost. (In a dark twist, the inspector generals office is itself under investigation for undisclosed alleged misconduct.) The chair of the House committee investigating Donald Trumps attempt to overturn the election said his panel would try to reconstruct the messages.

Well see where this story leads, but the Secret Service has long since forfeited the benefit of the doubt. Agencies try to flout their watchdogs all the time, and their excuses are frequently flimsy. But deleting records like this is pretty brazen, and if youre willing to take the Secret Services excuse at face value, Ive got some counterfeit $20 bills very real legal tender Id like to offer you at a very reasonable price.

The disappearance of the texts fits with the agencys recent pattern of behavior. As the Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig, the foremost chronicler of the contemporary Secret Service, has written, The Secret Services claim of being politically independent was tested by Trumps tenure in the White House. In one major example, a high-ranking Secret Service official, Tony Ornato, made a deeply unusual move from a civil-service job to being deputy White House chief of staff. New agents were assigned to Bidens protective detail when he took office, reportedly because of concerns that the old agents were too politically close to Trump.

Mystery shrouds the agencys work on January 6especially with records missing. During his speech at the infamous rally on January 6, Trump told attendees to march on the Capitol, and reportedly wanted to go himself. Secret Service agents refused to allow him, citing security concerns. The former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the House committee investigating January 6 that Ornato recounted to her what happened next: Trump supposedly lunged at the steering wheel of a presidential SUV and tried to force an agent to drive him to the Capitol. Through a spokesperson, the Secret Service denied the story, and neither Ornato nor the agent have spoken about it publicly. But CNN reports that similar stories were circulating within the Secret Service for months, and a D.C. police officer reportedly corroborated the account as well.

Agents were involved in another strange episode a little later on January 6. As the Trump-incited mob breached the Capitol, Vice President Mike Pence was whisked to safety, and his security detail reportedly sought to get him into his armored limousine. But Pence refused, reportedly fearing that the agents would remove him from the building, which might have further disrupted the certification of Bidens win.

The agencys independence isnt the only thing that looks shaky: so does the other pillar of its reputation, competence. This week, an employee staffing Bidens trip to Israel was sent home after a reported physical altercation with a woman there. (This isnt the first time an employee has been shipped back to the States for bad behavior.) In April, the FBI alleged that two men impersonating federal agents had fooled the Secret Service. And earlier this month, Biden announced that the agencys chief was leaving to join the social-media company Snap (where at least he wont have to worry about preserving his messages).

These incidents are just part of a string of snafus dating back more than a decade. During the Obama administration, the Secret Service allowed people to fire shots at the White House, permitted an armed guard to ride an elevator with the president, got into trouble overseas, and had car accidents after drinking. Officials were repeatedly sackedincluding one who was investigating agents visiting sex workers overseas, until he himself was arrested in a prostitution investigation.

This sort of haplessness is entertaining when its the Keystone Kops doing it on celluloid. But when the issues involved are as serious as the life of the president or attempts to subvert an election, laughter doesnt come so easily.

Related:

Seriously, Whats Making All These Mysterious Space Signals?

By Marina Koren

Astronomy can be, in some ways, a bit like the classic board game Clue. Scientists explore a sprawling but ultimately contained world, collecting pieces of information and testing out theories about a big mystery. You cant cover every corner, but with the right combination of strategy and luck, you can gather enough clues to make a reasonable guess at the tidy answerwho, where, and howenclosed in a little yellow envelope at the center of it all.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

Read. Ingrid Rojas Contrerass new memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, explores the legacy of her grandfather, a community healer who was said to have magical gifts.

Or spend your weekend with something else from our list of 21 books to match your mood.

Watch. The new FX/Hulu series The Bear is a study of masculinity in crisis, and it captures a toxic workplace like no other show has.

Looking for a movie? Here are 25 feel-good options youll want to watch again and again.

And theres always Netflixs adaptation of Jane Austens Persuasion, which our writer Helen Lewis found enjoyable despite the bizarreness of its modernization.

Play our daily crossword.

Thanks for reading this week. Its been a privilege to helm this ship for a few nautical miles, and I appreciate your eyeballs and emails. When Im not writing this newsletter or chronicling the every move of Donald J. Trump or reporting on criminal justice and voting rights, I moonlight as a jazz writer here. Im going to send you off to the weekend with a track from one of the best records in the genre this year, Immanuel Wilkinss The 7th Hand. Wilkins is a 24-year-old alto saxophonist from Philadelphia who already seems to be one of his generations defining jazz musicians. As my friend Gio Russonello has noted, Wilkinss music seamlessly traverses straight-ahead jazz, gospel, the avant-garde, and even contemporary R&B. The outwardly tranquil, subtly intense (home in on Kweku Sumbrys drums) track Fugitive Ritual, Selah is a good ramp into the weekend.

David

Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.

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The Shame of the Secret Service - The Atlantic