Althouse

---

• "Wim Hof’s technique of using physical discomfort—like ice baths—to improve mind and body is gaining popularity as it seeks scientific acceptance."
• "The Supreme Court said Monday it will consider reinstating the death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev..."
• "This is propaganda."
• "An unlikely coalition of Democrats across the ideological spectrum mounted an 11th-hour push in the final weekend before the American Rescue Plan for President Biden to go big on tackling child poverty."
• "In this case, a win for the cancellation artists would validate the dark prophesies one often finds in conservative writing, including on Substack..."
• At the Sunrise Café...

"Wim Hof’s technique of using physical discomfort—like ice baths—to improve mind and body is gaining popularity as it seeks scientific acceptance." Posted: 22 Mar 2021 11:39 AM PDT The Wall Street Journal reports. In 2013, researchers at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands found that 12 people trained by Mr. Hof and then injected with E. coli had milder flulike symptoms than an untrained control group. In 2019, tests indicated a significant decrease in inflammation in 13 people suffering spinal arthritis over eight weeks of training in breathing, meditation and cold exposure.... Mr. Hof's career was born out of tragedy. He was in the Pyrenees working as a mountain guide when his wife died by suicide in 1995. "That's the way it actually began—the real trial of my life," he says. "We were left behind with broken hearts, four kids and no money." Swimming in icy cold water had for years been a pastime. Now, he found it stopped the rumination and pain. Cold water causes you to be in the moment, he says. "Going into the cold brought a lot of space, like stillness in my mind. It gave me moments of time to stop the agony, the why, why, why ten thousand times a day."

"The Supreme Court said Monday it will consider reinstating the death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev..." Posted: 22 Mar 2021 10:54 AM PDT The justices agreed to hear an appeal filed by the Trump administration, which carried out executions of 13 federal inmates in its final six months in office, including three in the last week of President Donald Trump's term. The case won't be heard until the fall, and it's unclear how the new administration will approach Tsarnaev's case. The initial prosecution and decision to seek a death sentence was made by the Obama administration.... Biden has pledged to seek an end to the federal death penalty, but he has said nothing about how he plans to do so.... In late July, the federal appeals court in Boston threw out Tsarnaev's sentence because, it said, the judge at his trial did not do enough to ensure the jury would not be biased against him. The Justice Department had moved quickly to appeal, asking the justices to hear and decide the case by the end of the court's current term, in early summer. Then-Attorney General William Barr said last year, 'We will do whatever's necessary.'" AP reports.

"This is propaganda." Posted: 22 Mar 2021 10:18 AM PDT Teaching kids to be neoracists. Note how the assumption in this story is that this is a self-evident good. Not a single source suggesting this has critics. Not a one. This is propaganda. https://t.co/kQc79MfC1l — Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) March 22, 2021 Little children are always subjected to propaganda, though, so the real question is whether this is the propaganda we want for them. Let's look at the article:  Leigh Wilton and Jessica Sullivan, Skidmore College psychology professors who study race and social interaction, say that children develop implicit bias as early as 3 months old, and at 4 years old are categorizing and developing stereotypes....   Children must use cues from their parents to interact with the world around them, says Shauna Tominey, an assistant professor at Oregon State University and the author of "Creating Compassionate Kids." "From the very beginning, children look to the adults in their lives for cues as to how to respond to others, how to interpret what they see and hear, how to respond to people they meet or learn about. Even before young children can engage in conversations, they engage in 'social referencing' to figure out how to respond," says Tominey. Some of this is ordinary instruction that I've seen all my life, including as a child in the 1950s. It seemed rather anodyne to me. There are a bunch of people trying to sell their anti-racist materials. I'd like to see a deep, critical look at what's in those things. I see the reason to be skeptical. That's all I'll say.

"An unlikely coalition of Democrats across the ideological spectrum mounted an 11th-hour push in the final weekend before the American Rescue Plan for President Biden to go big on tackling child poverty." Posted: 22 Mar 2021 10:07 AM PDT "They prevailed over what one person involved in the process called the 'cost police' in Biden's inner circle, those anxiously warning about the ballooning cost of the stimulus package.... This under-the-radar success created what could be the most consequential piece of the $1.9 trillion package — one that, if made permanent, could approach the impact of the programs established under President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty. The sudden, unexpected creation of an approximately $120 billion social program has thrown a twist into the political landscape.... With the initiative expiring in a year, all but ensuring it will be a major issue in the midterms, the child poverty measure raises a central question: Are the politics of big government back?... A family with two young children and no income will now get $600 a month. The parents of 90 percent of the country's children will benefit, and 27 million children will be lifted from poverty, according to analysts.... ...Democrats hope American families will get used to receiving their checks, and they cite the Washington axiom that it's hard to take something away from voters after they've started receiving it. Still, popularizing the program will require Biden to begin selling it..... Some Democrats acknowledge that some in their party are squeamish about having to defend the distribution of government checks to working-age adults who are not working....  " From "How Biden quietly created a huge social program" (WaPo).

"In this case, a win for the cancellation artists would validate the dark prophesies one often finds in conservative writing, including on Substack..." Posted: 22 Mar 2021 05:28 AM PDT "... a future where 'woke capital,' in thrall to left-wing activists, makes it effectively impossible to hold a professional-class job without enthusiastically embracing progressive orthodoxy — especially on issues of identity. That world already seems uncomfortably close for journalists and academics, given that most of their institutions lean left. But self-publishing? It ought to be immune from cancellation unless the mob can somehow convince you to fire yourself. That changes, however, if activists can enforce a secondary boycott on the newsletter services, payment processors or web hosts that writers use. If that happens, it's hard to see where viewpoint diversity could survive for long, except possibly in conservative outlets big enough to run their own technology and thereby survive the purge.... [E]conomist Cameron Harwick suggested... We actually are witnessing woke capital do what capital normally does, if the capitalist controls a monopoly. That is, extracting excess returns from the market — what economists call 'rents.'... And woke capital, Harwick argues, is actually the creation of a labor cartel: the highly progressive monoculture of professional workers. To keep them happy, institutions that employ a lot of professionals have been pressured toward a narrow ideological consensus, corresponding to the views of roughly the left-most 8 percent of the American electorate. It's a hidden fringe benefit that Harwick dubs 'ideological rents.' If Harwick is right, then cancel culture can't be defeated by Republican senators hassling Facebook or Twitter, because that doesn't touch the monoculture...." Writes Megan McArdle in "The Substack controversy's bigger story" (WaPo).

At the Sunrise Café... Posted: 21 Mar 2021 07:53 PM PDT   ... you can talk about anything you want.  And please think of supporting this blog by doing your shopping through the Althouse portal to Amazon, which is always right there in the sidebar. Thanks!

You are subscribed to email updates from Althouse. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States