Up From Facebook

  To follow up on a previous post, here's another webinar (last in the series) by Kip Sullivan, this time explaining the pernicious consequences of Medicaid and Medicare privatization. It is a religious belief among "fiscal conservatives" that the private sector is always and everywhere more efficient than government programs. In some situations, and where there is genuine free market competition, this can be true, but in health care, there is neither the free market competition nor the transparency to permit efficiency. Unless "efficiency" is defined as efficiently converting tax money into private income. A real "fiscal conservative" would demand accountability from HMOs and other health insurance businesses, to demonstrate--with data--that their business model delivers more efficiency *with the same quality of care* compared to fee-for-service. That accountability is absent, but privatization continues to be forced upon the most vulnerable in societ...

I've only personally met a couple of people who went on to commit murder. It gave me no insight into the personality of a killer. Both were PhDs who came from good families and were in successful careers. In contrast, here's an article about violence that emerges from privation and torment. And even in this story, the same event told by the victim and the perp are very different. How much of what we 'know' is real vs stories we learned? https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/12/30/metro/under-wheel/

Over a year ago, I posted here that I saw no evidence that wearing an unfitted cloth mask protects the wearer from COVID-19. At the time, I said there were three reasons to wear an unfitted cloth mask indoors: 1. If you have COVID-19 and are coughing and sneezing, it will protect others; 2. It will inhibit you from touching your nose and mouth; 3. It is virtue signaling, to remind others to social distance Even though I've been vaccinated since August 2020, I still mask up when required, and also at any retail place where the staff is masked, out of solidarity with the employees. As for the evidence, it doesn't appear to have changed: https://jabberwocking.com/heres-a-quick-look-at-the-evidence-about-mask-wearing/

I have a few dominant memories of high school, most of them pretty good. Ours was a three-year high school, and 10th grade wasn’t much fun for me, until midway through the year, my acne cleared up after I was allowed to see a dermatologist. But I ran varsity cross-country and track, which gave me a safe and healthy outlet for my energies, and by the end of the year, I had a girlfriend. I had many friendships in high school, a few of which have been renewed on FB. I honestly don’t know how I was perceived by my peers in high school, but I don’t recall being bullied. There were over 500 students just in my graduating class alone, so I didn’t know most of the kids I attended school with every day. I had a couple of accomplishments that I was proud of, neither of them academic. I doubt most of my classmates would have predicted that I’d end up in academia. My daughter’s high school was very different from mine, but I believe she had a healthy experience there as well. I suspect that a lot ...

“According to a new working paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Americans now die earlier than their European counterparts, no matter what age you’re looking at. Compared with Europeans, American babies are more likely to die before they turn 5, American teens are more likely to die before they turn 20, and American adults are more likely to die before they turn 65. At every age, living in the United States carries a higher risk of mortality. This is America’s unsung death penalty, and it adds up. Average life expectancy surged above 80 years old in just about every Western European country in the 2010s, including Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, the U.K., Denmark, and Switzerland. In the U.S., by contrast, the average life span has never exceeded 79—and now it’s just taken a historic tumble.” *snip* “Europe has better life outcomes than the United States across the board, for white and Black people, in high-poverty areas and low-poverty areas,” Hannes ...

I just finished “Mao” by Michael Lynch. I pilfered it from my niece’s bookshelf the last time I was in Colorado. It clocks in at 235 pages, so it is short. When I was in high school, I bought a copy of Mao’s red book (in English) from a senior. Since the book and Mao had been very much in the news during the previous decade because of the Cultural Revolution, I was interested in seeing what all the fuss was about. And of course there was the faint whiff of contraband, owning a copy of the red book in Oak Ridge during the Cold War. In the event, it proved to be a huge disappointment. I don’t know if it was a bad translation or if Mao really passed off such drivel as motivational speaking, but I gave up after a few pages out of sheer boredom. I even skipped ahead to see if it got better later. Nope. I’ve had a longtime fascination with Cold War history, partly because of growing up in Oak Ridge and partly from coming of age near the end of the Vietnam war. Over the years, I read The Long...

One of the courses my mom took as part of her PhD program was ethology. There was a widespread belief that understanding animal behavior would provide important insight into human psychology. I read a few of the ethology books she was reading at the time: Ardrey, Lornenz, Tinbergen. All concerned vertebrate behavior, though. Wilson was the dean of insect behavior, specifically ants. Late in her life, my mom sent me one of Wilson's books, "Naturalist," which I dutifully read. By then, I had imbibed heavily the reductionist philosophy that understanding mechanism was the key to modern biology. Also, I had read Philip Kitcher's "Vaulting Ambition," a critique of sociobiology, of which Wilson was a champion. So I've not read any of his many other books. It's not that I don't appreciate the importance of natural history. I read Ernst Mayr's "The Growth of Biological Thought," which was a kind of manifesto for the New Synthesis and the bi...

This year, I read more than the usual posts about the film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” One thing that was new to me was the suspicion the film drew by the FBI as being a work of socialist/communist propaganda. Even seen in the context of the Cold War and red scare politics, this idea seems absurd on its face. Both George Bailey and his nemesis, Mr. Potter are businessmen; Bailey is a banker and Potter is a landlord. If this were socialist propaganda, Bailey would be a government official. And the crisis in the film is resolved (spoiler alert!) when George’s wife rallies the citizens of Bedford Falls to voluntarily donate their own money to make up the bank’s debt. No taxation was involved. This is libertarian propaganda, not socialist propaganda. What may have saved the film from J. Edgar Hoover’s depredations was that Frank Capra’s and Jimmy Stewart’s political credentials were impeccable: “While known for their work on populist “little man vs. the system” features, most notably in 1939’...

"The Mughal dynasty, originating in what is now Uzbekistan, ruled India from 1526 until the 18th century, though the dynasty continued under British rule until 1857. Some of the members of the royal family were remarkably open-minded about religion, being a Muslim minority in a sea of Hindus and members of other religions. Indeed, most people in the Mughal bureaucracy were Hindus, and the Rajput Hindu cavalry was a key element of its military. It was not so much a Muslim empire, though Muslim rulers were at the top of it, as a multicultural one. "The ruler Akbar (r. 1556-1605), a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I, invited to his court holy men from the Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Zoroastrian communities where they held dialogues on the truth. When Akbar conquered Gujarat, he encountered Portuguese Christians based at the colony of Goa, and invited some Jesuits to his court. At one point he commissioned them to write a Persian account of the life of Jesus. Jesus is recognized...

Sadly, there are selfish citizens among us who refuse to be vaccinated for COVID-19, believing that their decision only affects themselves. This belief is false. Failing to get vaccinated increases the chances of infecting others and of hosting a more dangerous variant. The latest data I’ve seen shows that even though vaccinated people can get breakthrough infections, the viral load is lower and the infection clears faster than in unvaccinated infections. This means that with more people being vaccinated, the pool of replicating viruses shrinks. The major source of variation in SARS-CoV-2 is mistakes during viral replication, so the higher the viral burden and the longer the infection, the more viral replication that occurs. Ergo, vaccination not only benefits the vaccinated person and slows the transmission to others, but it also decreases the chance of new viral variants that might be more infectious and/or virulent. https://www.news-medical.net/news/20211109/Pfizer-BioNTech-COVID-19...

  Genomics and the peopling of the Americas It's gratifying to see that genomics confirms decades of anthropology and archeology, that humans first crossed into the Americas via the Beringia land bridge some 36,000 years ago. They're the ones who "discovered" America. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/dna-from-ancient-child-suggests-all-native-americans-can-be-traced-back-to-one-founding-population/?fbclid=IwAR3y3t_eOGEsk0b8i6A4F-FwtCK2iw9OQtDsC5T2oPXFGK95t2eDNJYwF7Q

"As of Wednesday at 8 a.m. EST, the unofficial U.S. COVID toll is 51,274,973 cases and 810,164 deaths, increases of 174,264 cases and 2,212 deaths versus a day ago." https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Assange is certainly not my idea of a hero. Indeed, as the linked article discusses, he had a significant role in bringing Donald Trump to power, and thus threatening the core of our Democratic Republic. But as a 1st Amendment absolutist, I recognize the threat to a free press posed by his prosecution. "Considering all the devastation Assange enabled with his 2016 plot against America, it is tough to embrace him as a free-speech martyr. But those who care about accountability and excessive government power don’t always get to choose the battles that must be waged to preserve First Amendment freedoms. Assange mounted a damaging attack on the United States and facilitated a profound subversion of its political system. Still, his prosecution under the Espionage Act is another assault on American democracy."   https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/12/denounce-julian-assange-dont-extradite-him/

"“We didn’t see Delta coming. I think most scientists did not — upon whose advice and direction we have relied — didn’t see Delta coming,” she said. “We didn’t see Omicron coming. And that’s the nature of what this, this awful virus has been, which as it turns out, has mutations and variants.”" I'm sure most scientists foresaw COVID variants. I know I did, and I'm neither a virologist nor an epidemiologist. As a geneticist, I'm a student of population biology and evolution. During a pandemic, viral populations are immense. Variation occurs with each generation, and the larger the population, the larger each generation and the higher the probability of variants that affect infection rates and/or virulence. The driver of evolution is selection acting upon natural variation. Thus, it was completely predictable that variants such as Delta and Omicron would appear, and will continue to appear until the pandemic abates. https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-12-17/...

  My Lovely And Talented Wife® emailed my a link to the WaPo (paywalled) that had the following lines: "“We are no longer the world’s oldest continuous democracy,” Walter writes. “That honor is now held by Switzerland, followed by New Zealand, and then Canada. " When you consider that by 1900, African Americans in the South couldn't vote and that women of any race couldn't vote, the US had no claim on being the world's oldest continuous democracy, even before Trumpism became a thing. So, yes, we're slipping backwards but, no, we haven't been anything like a real democracy for most of our existence. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/17/how-civil-wars-start-barbara-walter-research/

 . . . but this is worrisome: A “disturbing number” of veterans and even active-duty military members took part in the attack on the Capitol. The “potential for a total breakdown of the chain of command along partisan lines ... is significant should another insurrection occur,” they added. In a “contested election, with loyalties split,” some might “follow orders from the rightful commander in chief,” while other “rogue units” might “follow the Trumpian loser ... it is not outlandish to say a military breakdown could lead to civil war,” the generals warned. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/2024-election-coup-military-participants_n_61bd52f2e4b0bcd2193f3d72

  The GOP paints Joe Biden as a left-wing extremist, while in fact he is a bog-ordinary conservative. Time and time again, Biden has ducked a fight or played the appeasement card with the right-wing GOP. The latest example is renigging on paying compensation to the families who were separated at the border by Trump's barbarians: "The negotiated deal to offer some measure of compensation to families ripped to pieces by the Trump administration’s barbaric policies fell apart because somebody leaked the details of the negotiation to the Wall Street Journal, the fash went predictably nuts about it, and Joe Biden decided that this was a good reason to back out on the whole thing." Feh. https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/12/joe-bidens-disgraceful-cave-on-family-separation

Beeswing: Losing my way and finding my voice 1967-1975 We saw Richard Thompson perform at the Sheldon a few weeks back. Except for a couple of songs near the end of the show, it was a solo performance. He played songs spanning his >50 year career with energy, wit and enthusiasm. At a couple of points, he read passages from his “book.” This “book” was an autobiographical account of his early career, from 1967 just after he left school, until 1975. I just finished reading this book, and it was a fun and insightful look at the adventures of one of Britain’s great guitarists and singer-songwriters. I was aware of Thompson and his work with Fairport Convention, which he co-founded, although I only purchased a couple of Fairport CDs about 15 years ago. His concert reprised some of those songs, along with songs he recorded with his then-wife, Linda. From the book, I came to better understand the musical influences of folk and rock in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, particularly in Britain. Fairpo...

"The US death toll from Covid-19 has passed 800,000, a once-unimaginable figure seen as doubly tragic given that more than 200,000 of those lives were lost after vaccines became available last spring. "The figure represents the highest reported toll of any country in the world, and is likely even higher." *snip* "“Almost all the people dying are now dying preventable deaths,” said Dr Chris Beyrer, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “And that’s because they’re not immunized.”" And only one political party in the US has weaponized COVID-19 for purely political purposes. Feh https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/15/a-terrible-tragedy-us-tops-800000-covid-deaths-highest-in-the-world?fbclid=IwAR1TQZC0vNXWdTsvMO1N2G07-B6QUXhDbNoiaLg1mHPkU6pnwy5zYjJsUd8

I saw a blog post this morning comparing the situation in Ukraine to the situation in Europe after Nazi Germany annexed Czechoslovakia. Neville Chamberlain has been a popular whipping boy of history and his "peace in our time" Munich accord with Hitler is regularly flogged by those seeking a military confrontation. I don't see any simple way out in Ukraine, but I do know bad history when I see it. For example: • Russia is a thermonuclear power. Any military confrontation with Russia risks destroying human civilization on the planet within minutes. Nazi Germany never, at any point, had thermonuclear warheads. • Had the allies confronted Hitler militarily over Czechoslovakia, Hitler would have lost. If NATO were to confront Russia militarily, everyone would lose. • Lebensraum was a major foreign policy goal of Nazi Germany. Russia already has way more space than it can use, and annexation of Ukraine won’t significantly change that. • Nazi Germany sought military control of ...

For now, you can choose traditional Medicare or Medicare Advantage. If you plan to remain where you are and like the healthcare in your network, Medicare Advantage may be better for you. But if you need flexibility, traditional Medicare offers more choices. It looks like the financial investment business has its sights set on eliminating traditional Medicare by 2030 and forcing everyone onto insurance that is as bad or worse than Medicare Advantage: "The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services “Innovation Center” recently announced that by 2030, they will move all traditional Medicare enrollees into a “care relationship” with a 3rd party private, for profit middleman, labeled a “Direct Contracting Entity (DCE) without seniors’ knowledge or consent, and without Congressional oversight. Every enrollee in traditional Medicare should take note of the dangers. A program titled the Global and Professional Direct Contracting model in a little-known government agency known as the Center...

"Since January, we've had about 289 deaths; 75% are unvaccinated people," Dover said. "And the very few (vaccinated people) who passed away all were more than 6 months out from their shot. So we've not had a single person who has had a booster shot die from Covid." https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/09/us/hospital-covid-19-deaths-michigan/index.html 

"Thoroughbred horses, auto racing, massive ranches, luxury hotels. The hobbies and side businesses of the ultrawealthy create huge write-offs that can let them get away with paying little or no income tax for as much as a decade at a time." https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/when-youre-a-billionaire-your-hobbies-can-slash-your-tax-bill?fbclid=IwAR0VELoo-nFs5O9DGcbTjt-mud4Csgfh_u5EvOslEgJZ7uap4cJihddaljo

I should know better than to find out how that sentence ends. The man needs to stick to electric cars and batteries. But I guess he either has too much time on his hands or else Tourettes. Anyway, Elon thinks we all need to have more kids. Nevermind that with autocracy and climate change on the march around the globe, it's hard to be optimistic for the future. But Elon walks the walk--he has six kids. Of course, he's a billionaire, so they'll have whatever money they need to wall out catastrophe. Oy. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/07/elon-musk-civilization-will-crumble-if-we-dont-have-more-children.html

Adoption is not an "alternative" to abortion. Adoption is the alternative to the biological parents raising the child themselves. When Roe is overturned, the alternative to abortion is forced birth.

I continue to doubt that Trump will run for president again in 2024. But this Atlantic article makes some valuable and very scary points. Certainly, the foundations of American democracy are weaker than any time since the Civil War. “In nearly every battle space of the war to control the count of the next election—statehouses, state election authorities, courthouses, Congress, and the Republican Party apparatus—Trump’s position has improved since a year ago.” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/january-6-insurrection-trump-coup-2024-election/620843/

I see where Bob Dole died. I didn't know him personally, so maybe there was a residue of humanity in the man that never got reported. My impression was of a cynical, regressive person who embodied everything that was wrong in American politics during his long political career. He looks more reasonable in comparison to Trump and the right-wing extremists running the GOP today, but we shouldn't compare ourselves to the worst, we should compare ourselves to the best. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/05/bob-dole-republican-presidential-nominee-advance-obit-033611?fbclid=IwAR0UWXpFApYHzTAIG2PskcmszDixSWxMzbRvs3gQUzRK0-gN8IsHhMg4z9o

The attacks on Critical Race Theory boil down to the fact that they are an assault on our national mythology. A mythology that reveres the Declaration of Independence, authored by a white man who owned slaves and raped one of them. A mythology that reveres a supreme court that supported slavery and separate but equal. A mythology that America confronted fascism when it really waited until Pearl Harbor before it decided to join the Allies. At what point does a nation acknowledge that it has been served poorly by its mythology, and choose to acknowledge a checkered history? There's no "American exceptionalism," there's just a nation wrestling with its demons. Germany and Japan have done a better job of confronting their demons than the US. A mature country would embrace CRT. An "exceptional" nation would embrace CRT.  

I have watched a few minutes from the Beatles flick "Get Back" and listened to a few more minutes of soundtrack. Meh. I was a Beatles fan in the early '60s when I was a kid and so were they. I saw Help! and Yellow Submarine when they came out, and was impressed. But I gradually lost interest. In college, I bought a copy of the Let It Be LP off a cut-out rack and I got a CD of Sgt. Pepper for my 40th birthday. I just learned that Phil Spector produced Long And Winding Road, and now I understand why it's so twee. Look, I won't debate taste in books, wine or music, all topics that I have a lot of experience with and know more than the average American about. But as far as the Beatles go, I don't regard them as some sort of apotheosis of musical achievement, and Glenn Gould agrees with me. For what that's worth. Glenn Gould is dead.

"Higher resting heart rate (RHR) was linked to greater dementia risk and faster cognitive decline independent of cardiovascular disease in a study of more than 2,000 older adults in Sweden. People with RHR of 80 bpm or higher had a 55% increased risk of developing dementia compared with people whose RHR was 60-69 bpm (adjusted HR 1.55, 95% CI 1.06-2.27), reported Yume Imahori, MD, PhD, of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and co-authors." https://www.medpagetoday.com/neurology/dementia/95999?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2021-12-04&eun=g1700464d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Headlines%20Top%20Cat%20HeC%20%202021-12-04&utm_term=NL_Daily_DHE_dual-gmail-definition

Guns are killing machines. That is their purpose, whether or not they are used for target practice. As such, society should demand that gun owners take reasonable care to insure that their guns are not used to kill innocent people. I'm glad to see that the parents of the Michigan kid who shot his classmates are being charged with manslaughter. This needs to happen more often. “Prosecutors in Michigan took a rare step on Friday by filing involuntary manslaughter charges against the parents of the 15-year-old accused of fatally shooting four students in the halls of Oxford High School, according to court documents. The office of Karen D. McDonald, the prosecutor in Oakland County, filed four charges of involuntary manslaughter against James and Jennifer Crumbley, one for each of the students killed. Law enforcement authorities say that Mr. Crumbley legally bought the 9-millimeter Sig Sauer handgun four days before his son used it to carry out the country’s deadliest school shooting t...

When I was growing up, my dad had a .32 semi-automatic pistol. He didn't lock it up, but he kept it unloaded and separate from the ammo. After moving to upstate NY, he traded it for a spud gun, which is larger caliber, but muzzle loaded. When my mom started spending time at their rural NY house, she bought a shotgun. They kept it, unloaded and in a fiberglass case, until they moved to a senior community. We've never had a firearm in our house. I've never regretted that decision. When I was in college, I went deer hunting with a 12 gauge rifle. While I practiced firing it, and several other firearms, at the Knoxpatch city dump, I never fired it at any animals. The data show that homes with guns have a higher probability of homicide and suicide.

I got the Moderna vaccine as part of their phase III trial in August and September, 2020, and the Moderna booster this past September. Linda got the Pfizer vaccine in January and February 2021, and the Pfizer booster this past August. Who got the better shot? Here's the money graf from the latest epidemiological data via the New England Journal of Medicine: "The 24-week risk of Covid-19 outcomes was low after vaccination with mRNA-1273 [Moderna] or BNT162b2 [Pfizer], although risks were lower with mRNA-1273 than with BNT162b2. This pattern was consistent across periods marked by alpha- and delta-variant predominance." w00t! https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2115463