Monthly Archives: June 2021

An early study of the responses to the Covid-19 pandemic seems to indicate that a strong initial response is better than a minimal notice response:

We compared COVID-19 deaths, gross domestic product (GDP) growth, and strictness of lockdown measures during the first 12 months of the pandemic for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries that aim for elimination or mitigation (figure). Although all indicators favour elimination, our analysis does not prove a causal connection between varying pandemic response strategies and the different outcome measures. COVID-19 deaths per 1 million population in OECD countries that opted for elimination (Australia, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea) have been about 25 times lower than in other OECD countries that favoured mitigation (figure). Mortality is a proxy for a country’s broader disease burden. For example, decision makers should also consider the increasing evidence of long-term morbidities after SARS-CoV-2 infection. [“SARS-CoV-2 elimination, not mitigation, creates best outcomes for health, the economy, and civil liberties,” Miquel Oliu-Barton, et al, The Lancet (Volume 397)]

In other words, trying to preserve your economy ended up damaging it more, while paying strong attention to the pandemic came out better. But there is a fly in the ointment, as NewScientist (19 June 2021) notes:

It is notable that the five elimination countries are island nations or South Korea, which has one tightly controlled land border. [Jeffrey Lazarus of the Barcelona Institute for Global Health in Spain] accepts that isolation could have something to do with their success. “It is easier to protect the borders of an island state, if you want to,” he says. But it isn’t impossible for other countries to police their borders. Denmark nearly qualified as an elimination country, says Lazarus, but struggled to control Danes living in Sweden from going back and forth over the Øresund Bridge.

The ability to police one’s borders is going to vary wildly based on location. The Rio Grande isn’t normally a big deal to cross; meanwhile, no one wants to go into the Demilitarize Zone between North and South Korea. Indeed, comparing countries is always problematic, at least in my mind. It’s gotta be hard to control for the varying circumstances.

cri de coeur:

An impassioned outcry, appeal, protest or entreaty. [Wiktionary]

Noted in “The Feminist vs. The Cancelers,” Cathy Young, Arc Digital:

[Chimamanda Ngozi] Adichie recently caused controversy with a long essay titled “It Is Obscene: A True Reflection in Three Parts.” The piece is a cri de coeur against the self-righteous zealotry of current social justice politics, particularly online, and against what has come to be known as “cancel culture.” It is also a very personal story about being maligned by two fellow Nigerians, former students from her writing workshop, because of her disagreement with some aspects of the transgender rights movement. The former students, whom Adichie does not name but others have, are activist OluTimehin Adegbeye and activist/writer Akwaeke Emezi.

TPM reports on an effort to remove the statues of traitors and fools from the Capitol:

House Republicans on Tuesday viewed the chamber’s upcoming vote on legislation to remove Confederate statues from the Capitol as an opportunity to accuse Democrats of trying to “erase history” and boost their hysteria over so-called “Critical Race Theory.”

Amid throwing his support behind the bill, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gleefully remarked that the Confederate statues in the Capitol are “Democrats.”

“Let me state a simple fact,” McCarthy said. “All the statues being removed by this bill are statues of Democrats.”

Which is both true and, if not irrelevant, to the Democrats’ credit. Speaker Pelosi should have simply smiled and said,

I’m glad the Minority Leader agrees that it’s a good thing to not celebrate traitors and dunderheads, be they Democrats or Republicans, and, for that reason, I expect 100% cooperation from Republicans on this matter.

Sure, vote against the Speaker and find yourself in despicable company. It’s rather like a pin in chess.

Trocar:

A surgical instrument. It is used to evacuate body cavities of their contents, especially for purposes of embalming a corpse.
“The mortician made a cut into the lower intestine, inserted the trocar, and activated the suction.” [Urban Dictionary]

Noted in this Ask The Mortician video. The first mention of a trocar is at about 8:30.

… a bit of death and decay.

Just don’t get in their way.

Murderball (2005) isn’t a jaunt into a fevered, science-fictionish sport, but instead the nickname for quadriplegic rugby. This documentary delivers an intense, informative jolt of experience and emotion involving a game virtually without rules, its culture, and the quadriplegics who play it – from the novices who cannot believe that their tragic accident isn’t going to keep them out of competitive sports, to the top level competitors who train rigorously and compete in leagues in order to qualify for the Paralympics, all while having fun – hopefully.

Along the way we meet a number of them up close and personal, such as former top level competitor, now coach, Joe Soares, and the charismatic Mark Zupan. But it’s not just the game itself, but how they conduct their lives that we get to see.

And it’s fascinating. It’s hard to find mistakes in this documentary. Maybe it would have benefited from a bit more in-depth exploration, but honestly I think it’s one of the finer documentaries I’ve seen.

My Arts Editor and I enjoy watching a couple of shows concerning the narrowboats of Great Britain, namely Cruising the Cut and Travels by Narrowboat. In this particular episode, the narrowboater of Cruising the Cut interviews a couple who, along with being narrowboaters themselves, are also world-class pianists, and are seeking to create a new way to get your music.

We found it charming.

A few weeks ago I wrote on the mysterious matter of the public disappearance of former AG William Barr during the latter stages of the 2020 Presidential campaign, as well as its aftermath when he could have caused a lot of mischief, and it appears that my reading of the situation was right:

But Barr told me he had already concluded that it was highly unlikely that evidence existed that would tip the scales in the election. He had expected Trump to lose and therefore was not surprised by the outcome. He also knew that at some point, Trump was going to confront him about the allegations, and he wanted to be able to say that he had looked into them and that they were unfounded. So, in addition to giving prosecutors approval to open investigations into clear and credible allegations of substantial fraud, Barr began his own, unofficial inquiry into the major claims that the president and his allies were making.

“My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time,” Barr told me. “If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit.” [Jonhathan Karl, The Atlantic]

He figured out he was allied with a bullshit artist and went to ground.

I’ve been watching the movements of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops as they’ve deliberated on a power grab in the form of a report on the Eucharist. As CNN/Politics reported last week:

By a vote of 168 to 55, with six abstentions, the bishops went forward with plans for a report on the meaning of the Eucharist in the church. The vote is part of a longer process, and a rebuke of Biden and other Catholic politicians who support abortion rights is not assured. The report will be developed over the summer and presented for amendments and approval in November.

I’ve been avoiding an instant opinion on this matter, opting to see how things turned out, not to mention suffering from a lack of time. So far as I can tell, this is really about worldly power.

After all, holding power is, for most power-seekers, controlling the behavior of people, and this is all about control of an American President, as well as the American people – 50% of whom believe we are better off with liberal abortion rights rather than restrictions.

To excuse the bishops for reason of religion, then, is an intellectual error. While Stephen Jay Gould may have advanced a magisterial realms theory to keep religion separate from the worldly in theory, it was doomed from the start because religion is quite often the horse on which the power-seeker rides, the solar chariot from which fire is loosed on their foes. In simple and historical reality, the other-worldly seeks dominion over the worldly.

For those readers who wonder, the bishops seem to have backed down:

Days after a vote that triggered a tsunami of Catholic debate about Communion and politics, leading U.S. Catholic bishops working on an upcoming document about the sacrament are now de-emphasizing direct confrontation with President Biden or other Catholic politicians who support abortion rights. …

“There will be no national policy on withholding Communion from politicians. The intent is to present a clear understanding of the Church’s teachings to bring heightened awareness among the faithful of how the Eucharist can transform our lives and bring us closer to our creator and the life he wants for us,” the Q&A said. [WaPo]

At least until the next bulgy eyed moment.

Erick Erickson is worried that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is falling apart:

A number of friends of mine have crossed a line that I think they should not have crossed and I am extremely disappointed. Given that their actions are causing public news, I should write about it publicly so they can subtweet me.

Their guy lost the Southern Baptist Convention presidency. Instead of acting with grace in a church setting, they’ve acted now with partisanship as if the winners and losers are political figures to be slimed in a never ending campaign. The perpetual campaign in a church setting is staggeringly gross. That they are doing it with half-truths and distortions makes it worse. That they have not one ounce of humility left to consider the sins of their own actions makes it damnable.

On top of it all, Ed Litton, the winner, is to my left and I’d have voted for the other guy were I Baptist. But what they are doing to Litton, who is a good man even as we might disagree on things, is beyond the pale.

I have two reactions. First, why is he surprised? The evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, twice, for President. Perhaps the first time there was an excuse, but four years later the mendacious nature and inferior character of the candidate was quite obvious.

That they approved of that candidate, even under the guise of the Cyrus excuse, should have been a big, red flag that they approve of his behavior and morals. When they then act like the former President in their religious politics, there’s no surprise, at least for me. The SBC may shatter into a thousand pieces because of the intemperate embrace of the former President, and even now they seem to be squeezing that much harder. Thus, they become more and more easily dismissed as kooks and fools. The SBC may be cracking up.

The second point is this: Erickson’s entire final quoted paragraph embodies a very important lost point of American civilization: tolerance. He wouldn’t have voted for Litton, but he wouldn’t treat him that way. Down that path lies the salvation of American civilization: the recognition that deviation of opinion does not constitute an irredeemable rift between people. Infallibility is not a property that anyone, progressive or conservative or far-right extremists like those taking over the SBC and GOP, possess, and those who pretend otherwise are the enemies of American civilization.

I don’t think Erickson, who has equated abortion to baby-killing, would recognize that as an important point, but I think it’s pivotal, foundational.

It might even be so sophisticated that its perpetrators don’t actually realize its just such an attack.

On Upworthy, Tod Perry notes there’s something called a post-truther era:

A lot of talking heads have remarked that we live in a post-truth era. In 2016, the Oxford Dictionary defined it as “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

And moves on to a … conspiracy … theory …

Yep, Birds Aren’t Real is a thing. A pretty big one, too. Birds Aren’t Real has over 300,000 followers on Instagram and 66,000 on Twitter. Plus, there are local Birds Aren’t Real chapters sprouting up all over the U.S.

The theory postulates that in the ’50s, the CIA began killing off America’s bird population and replacing them with flying surveillance robots. Birds Aren’t Real estimates there are currently 12 billion birds watching us from above.

Sure, it’s a joke. But it’s a joke that seems calculated to pull in the intellectually vulnerable, and then the next time they see a bird and its non-technological innards – say, hanging out of Fluffy’s mouth – it’s like a crowbar upside the head.

Think about all those conspiracy theories you’ve indulged in!, it screams.

Or maybe it’s just a joke.

A reader comments on the misleading warnings that the filibuster protects progressive programs and priorities as well:

And remember, the GQP killed the filibuster for judicial appointments specifically so they could ram through their agenda of appointing favorable judges. This has been one of Moscow Mitch’s frequently stated goals: to screw future D legislators by having life-time judicial appointments beholden to his ideology.

For those readers who are wondering, GQP is not a typo, but a reference to the increased influence the QAnon conspiracy theories appears to be having on Republicans.

Insofar as the filibuster’s application to judicial nominations goes, I found this in Wikipedia’s page on former Senator and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV):

On November 21, 2013, under Reid’s tenure as Majority Leader, the Democratic majority Senate voted 52–48 to eliminate the 60-vote requirement to end a filibuster against all executive branch nominees and judicial nominees other than to the Supreme Court. A 3/5 supermajority was still required to end filibusters unrelated to those nominees, such as for legislation and Supreme Court nominees. The Democrats’ stated motivation for the “nuclear option” was expansion of filibustering by Republicans during the Obama administration, in particular blocking three nominations to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

It’s a little difficult justifying blaming Republicans and not Democrats, as they both have indulged in removing filibuster requirements.

Remember, costume parties always lead to unwanted marriages!

Lady Behave! (1938) is a farcical bit of a comedy that left me a little flat. A little too much partying leaves Clarice with not one, but two husbands. This is an era in which such a drunken mistake like this can lead to serious legal consequences, so older sister Paula, the responsible one, sends Clarice off on an overseas trip, and conspires with her lawyer to make this all work out by pretending to be her young sister. A little pretending, a flourish or two, a minor divorce, and all should be well.

But she finds herself tangling with a very, very rich man, Stephen Cormack, his butler, and his two precocious children. The kids hate her; the butler isn’t quite sure what’s going on. And the would-be husband? Distracted by work and bemused at his own unwise behavior – apparently, he’s a repeat offender, at least since his first wife passed away – he has to admit that Paula has her own set of charms.

Throw in Clarice’s real husband, who is a hustler of dubious ethics as well as a fancier of the horses, and this all should be fun. But there’s not enough background to Clarice and Paula, and, for that matter, Stephen, to really feel a connection. The kids are surprisingly interesting and charming, but even they feel a bit more arbitrary than they should, perhaps playing to the stereotypes of the era. But it’s not enough, and the butler and the rest of Stephen’s staff is hardly more than cardboard cutout.

You may enjoy this more than I, but I found it a bit of a struggle to get through.

As a later-in-life diabetic, this gives me hope:

Meanwhile, Ali Tavassoli at the University of Southampton, UK, has found a small molecule known as compound 14, which indirectly activates a metabolic sensor called AMPK. To see if compound 14 might be a good treatment for metabolic disorders, he and his colleagues fed mice a high-fat diet so they became obese and developed diabetes-like symptoms, then gave them compound 14.

“The results floored us,” says Tavassoli. After just seven daily doses of the drug, the mice lost weight and their diabetes symptoms disappeared. By comparison, people whose diabetes is treated with metformin, which works through a similar pathway to compound 14, tend to gain weight. In more recent, unpublished work, Tavassoli and his team showed that patterns of gene expression in the animals’ fat cells no longer reflect obesity, but resemble those of normal-weight mice. Compound 14, says Tavassoli, appears to be “profoundly reprogramming” the metabolism of these mice.

So far, these substances have mostly been tested in non-human animals. But the relevant metabolic pathways are similar in people, which makes Evans optimistic that activating PPAR-delta or similar master switches could “reboot physiology” in us too. He says pressing such switches could be all it takes to go from sluggish and overweight to fit and athletic. [“Exercise pills: Should we use drugs that mimic benefits of a workout?” Jo Marchant, NewScientist (24 April 2021, paywall)]

Given I became type 2 diabetic after surgery and heavy antibiotic use, and it’s apparently common for type 2 to kick in after a big jolt to the system, I have to wonder if this Compound 14 reactivates an inadvertently shutdown metabolic pathway. Or turns it off.

Ah, but if I were a mouse!

Hatch a scheme to accuse an agency head of being illegal? Check.

Add in the part that all of his decisions, which have robbed deprived you and your wealthy fellow investors of billions of dollars? Check.

End up at SCOTUS, where the conservatives should deliver those billions of dollars? Check.

And win?

Well, sort of. Mark Joseph Stern of Slate explains:

In 2016, a group of wealthy investors hatched a lawsuit to dislodge $124 billion from the United States treasury and transfer a chunk of the money to their own pockets. The investors attacked the Federal Housing Finance Agency, a powerful executive agency that regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Their plan was to force a settlement that would enrich shareholders by transferring billions of dollars back to the mortgage giants and release them from government control.

It is difficult to overstate how badly this scheme backfired. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court affirmed the investors’ constitutional theory—then rejected their effort to claw back billions while deregulating the mortgage industry. In the process, they allowed President Joe Biden to appoint a new head of the FHFA, a progressive who will keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac funneling money to the government (instead of shareholders) indefinitely. The plaintiffs, in other words, did not just lose this case. They inadvertently defeated their ultimate objective, entrenching the very system they tried to topple.

Sometimes, you emphatically don’t want what you wish for.

And you know, “wealthy investors” really should know better. You’ve already got your first billion bucks? Maybe it’s time to find a new vocation, because, baby, chasing extreme wealth is really a cold, empty path to walk.

Live in someone else’s shoes for a whlie.

Ramsha Jahangir on coda reports on the growing phenomenon of fake news in Pakistan:

“With clapping hands and cheering crowds, with beating hearts and smiling faces, international cricket is back in Pakistan,” said a man, dressed in a cricket jersey, to camera. The three-minute video was uploaded to the Facebook account of a news organization called CJ Post, which has 316,000 followers, and was posted hundreds of times on Twitter.

There was only one problem: CJ Post is not a real news outlet and the presenter is not a journalist, but an actor.

“Andrew Hamilton,” who has appeared in multiple videos shared by CJ Post, is a fictional newsreader played by a Cuban-born American man hired on the freelance platform, Fiverr.com.

Fake news, fake newscaster. But a real company providing the service. The goal?

According to Jack Stubbs, director of investigations at Graphika, such practices help PR companies to further their client agendas while preserving some degree of anonymity. “Outsourcing the work is often easier and safer for political actors who want to remain one step removed from the hands-on-keyboard operation.”

“All this shows how political groups can trade on the values of a free press to covertly advance their own interests,” he added.

AlphaPro’s clients include the Pakistan military’s media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), state-owned Chinese infrastructure firms, NGOs, universities and other government agencies.

That Pakistan’s military is involved is unsurprising but chilling. The Pakistani military is often an important element of the political scene. I wonder how important they think that the news be authentic in Pakistan, and I’m guessing Not very.

And what’s the business ethics of the company’s that produce these fake newscasts?

The hollyhocks are in bloom, which can be gorgeous. They still have a ways to go so far, though.

Quite lovely, unless The Day of the Triffids (1962) gives you nightmares. Oh, my Arts Editor once said something similar.

If the people are having troubles, sometimes you have to bring in the big guns.

As the first wave of COVID-19 spread through India last June, Anilan Namboothiri, a resident of the southern state of Kerala, set up a new idol in his home shrine that he honors as “corona devi,” or corona goddess: The unusual polystyrene figure, resembling the spiky COVID-19 protein, found its place alongside established Hindu deities such as Krishna and Shiva in the 48-year-old journalist’s shrine.

“In ancient times, contagions were attributed to the wrath of goddesses… that needed to be propitiated,” said Namboothiri in Malayalam. “The message I wanted to send people is that you can stay at home and worship god. God exists everywhere.”

Across India, people are worshipping female divine forms of the coronavirus, variously called “corona devi,” or by other forms of respect such as “corona mata” (corona mother) or “corona mai.” Incidents of idol worship or rituals to a coronavirus-inspired female deity have been reported from the southernmost states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar in the north and Assam in the east, all apparently springing up organically and unrelatedly. [Religion News Service]

It doesn’t say that social distancing and vaccination were the decrees of the goddess, so they’d better get around to it quickly.

It’s a bit of a big, blunt social tool, but if it works, then it’s at least tolerable.

Every time someone ‘betrays’ him, he blows. It doesn’t matter if it’s former Vice President, Mike Pence, refusing to decline to honor Electoral College votes that didn’t conform to Trump’s wishes, or obscure Michigan GOP elected officials who didn’t find that for which Trump’s searching.

Speaking of …

Former President Donald Trump took aim at two Republican Michigan lawmakers in a statement issued Thursday after a report led by Sen. Ed McBroom, R-Vulcan, debunked several false claims surrounding the results of the 2020 election.

Trump’s email hit the inboxes of his supporters one day after a Michigan Senate committee unveiled a report Wednesday morning that found no evidence of systematic voter fraud in the 2020 general election.

In the statement, Trump called the report – which used hours of public testimony and “countless” documents to conclude the 2020 general election was free from fraud – a “cover up.”

“Michigan State Senators Mike Shirkey and Ed McBroom are doing everything possible to stop Voter Audits in order to hide the truth about November 3rd,” the former president wrote.

The report also suggested Attorney General Dana Nessel look into individuals who used fake claims to raise money “for their own ends,” to be investigated.

Trump used the recommendation to accuse the Republican-led committee of wanting to “investigate the Patriots,” who he claims are fighting to expose what he maintains was “a very possibly Rigged Election.” [m-live]

It’s rather fascinating that the Michigan GOP, at least in the persons of the 3 (out of 4) members of the committee, announced they had confirmed the success of the Michigan election effort, or, if you’re the former President, the failure to find fraud.

This has earned them the easily forecast expulsion from Trump’s affections. Old Faithful, he is.

Obviously, the opinions of three Republicans doesn’t represent the Michigan GOP as a whole, but it does indicate that those motivated to find fraud failed to do so – which reassures me that there was little enough fraud to find in the first place, although I hardly needed such reassurance.

It also suggests that, at least in Michigan, local Republicans faced with realities on the ground will admit to them, regardless of political pressures, and that suggests they still understand that reality beats fantasies hands down. Look for this to play out in other localities, perhaps even Arizona, while Trump will try to head off any more admissions in some way dreadful and, yet, amusing.

It’ll be interesting to see if the Michigan GOP splits asunder the pressure of reality v fantasy.

Mark Sumner on Daily Kos summarizes some interesting findings involving various Covid-19 vaccines and China:

Joy Oladokun:

I had heard that Senator Sinema (D-AZ) had argued that it’s important to keep the filibuster because it protects progressive laws, and I thought, Well, that’s stupid reasoning. But now I see a Professor David Super of Georgetown is making the same argument:

This perspective is remarkably shortsighted. Although the filibuster has blocked central parts of the Democratic program in recent years, it has done the same for key features of the Republican agenda, too. At a time when the Republican Party is becoming ever more extreme, and when other constraints on irresponsible action have fallen away, the filibuster is more important than ever as a tool to protect hard-won legislative gains of the civil rights, environmental and consumer revolutions. It is the filibuster alone that protects the Endangered Species Act, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Legal Services Corp. [WaPo]

And this is convincing … how?

What is stopping the Republicans from killing the filibuster rule and enacting their desired legislation?

Their honor?

Or did the Democrats win the flip of the coin that decides who has dominion over the filibuster rule in this session of Congress?

Arguing on the basis of the status quo is a lost argument; there are variables at play here, and ascertaining them, their current values, and their resistance to change is key to building a realistic model of the situation. I think that the respect the Republicans have for their colleagues across the aisle, based on the comments of GOP leader Senator McConnell (R-KY), indicate that the filibuster’s predictable lifetime is now fairly short.

The question is whether the Democrats want to harvest the riches that may come of removing the filibuster, or, in the unfortunate instance of the Republicans taking the Senate back, it goes to the Republicans.

I like this lily because of its color palette:

When I was a cub reporter, my city editor was an H.L. Mencken clone who laughed at Bible-thumping hillbilly preachers. One day, as a young truth-seeker, I asked him: You’re correct that their explanations are fairy tales, but what answer can an honest person give about the deep questions: Why are we here? Why is the universe here? Why do we die? Is there any purpose to life? He eyed me and replied: You can say: I don’t know. That rang a bell in my head that still echoes. It’s honest to admit that you cannot explain the unexplainable. – James A. Haught, “The Long, Slow Death of Religion,” Daylight Atheism.

Sure wish I could have met that editor.