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Home » Open thread 1/7/22

Open thread 1/7/22

The New Neo Posted on by

The evolution of a song, in reverse.

They made it famous:

He covered it even before that, without his brother:

But this guy wrote it:

For me, the Hollies’ harmonies win, hands down.

Comments

Open thread 1/7/22 — 36 Comments

  2. Sotomayor says 100,000 children are in serious condition.

    HHS says the number is 3,342.

    Wise Latina indeed.

  3. There are currently 116,000 people of all ages hospitalized for COVID yet this justice claims that 100,000 of them are children. There hasn’t even been 100,000 pediatric hospitalizations in the entire pandemic.

    The failure of the judicial branch is an under the radar thing that has allowed the tyranny to continue.

  4. Did you notice the arranger on Phil’s song was Warren Zevon.
    Loved/love the Hollies “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress”

  7. ‘It Never Rains In Southern California’ written and performed by Albert Hammond is one of my favorite songs of the 1970s.

    The line ‘don’t tell ’em how you found me and don’t tell ’em how you found me’ is such clever songwriting.

    Hammond wrote a bunch of other hits including ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’ a #1 hit for Starship in the 1980s.

  12. The other problem with Sotomayor’s statistics, besides inaccuracy, is that the question before the Court is not what is wise policy, but whether OSHA has the legal authority to impose such policies.

  13. Kate,

    Yes, and Gorsuch really focused on that. If Kavanaugh and Barrett vote with the four leftists this will be an astonishing betrayal of so many people that fought tooth and nail for them to be confirmed.

  14. I love this song but every time I hear the Hollies playing it I think it’s Quicksilver Messenger Service. I have no idea why.

  15. And apparently Breyer announced that there 750 million new cases yesterday. Never mind the fact that there’s only 330 million in the country. Are these people for real?

  19. Continuing my “history is not a straight line” and “the Left is at last being pushed back” themes:
    ____________________________________

    Over the past several decades, the progressive Left has successfully fulfilled Antonio Gramsci’s famed admonition of a “long march through the institutions”. In almost every Western country, its adherents now dominate the education system, media, cultural institutions, and financial behemoths.

    But what do they have to show for it? Not as much as they might have expected. Rather than a Bolshevik-style assumption of power, there’s every chance this institutional triumph will not produce an enduring political victory, let alone substantially change public opinion.

    –Joel Kotkin, “Is this the end of progressive America?
    Multiple fronts of resistance are taking shape”
    https://unherd.com/2022/01/is-this-the-end-of-progressive-america/
    ____________________________________

    This doesn’t end as a fairy tale. We will be fighting off the Left for the rest of my life anyway. But the Left has hit a high water mark, continues to overreach and for the immediate future it will meet serious resistance. Give Kotkin the last word:
    ____________________________________

    So, here’s the good news. On what sometimes seems the inexorable course towards progressive capture, we can see multiple fronts of resistance, and the early congealing of independent-minded forces, from the rational Right to the traditional liberal-left. Our society may never regain the feistiness of previous eras, and our new elites might continue marching through our institutions. But as they become increasingly discredited, they would be unwise to forget that all long marches one day come to an end.

  20. And apparently Breyer announced that there 750 million new cases yesterday. Never mind the fact that there’s only 330 million in the country. Are these people for real?

    1. He’s for real. He really is 83 years old.

    2. He really is in a profession chock-a-block with innumerates.

  24. @Huxley:

    You asked about Nootropics in another thread. I’ve been mildly interested from time to time but have really never gotten into them. I know that tryptophan-heavy foods give me more vivid dreams. Melatonin works like a charm for me, too. Can almost feel myself being pulled under. Very keen to try Modafinil but it’s totally illegal and as far as I can tell unavailable here… and this in a place where everyone knows where one can buy common antibiotics, SSRIs, etc. sub rosa sans prescription.

    How about the CS students pulling all nighters in your course? Are any of them tweaking their alertness and wakefulness?

  26. Something good courtesy of the YouTube Algo. and the Mosfilm channel.

    It begins with a cute bit of artistic license: Vronksy survives going off to the Balkan Wars at the end of Anna Karenina only to be wounded in the Russo Japanese War and… well guess who is commander of the field hospital he finds himself in?

    FULL MOVIE | Anna Karenina | FIRST EPISODE
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVs6tzE4I8o

  27. Zaphod:

    Melatonin gives me dreams in vivid color. I found it a bit too weird and was discouraged from further attempts.

    Tried gingko biloba, but no joy.

    Ma huang — chinese herbal ephedrine — worked as a “speed,” but it’s hard on the system and I’m not built for that kind of high. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal now.

    I was a Durk & Sandy fan back in the day, so I check for new developments, but it doesn’t seem like anything rises above the placebo level.

    I wonder about Ben Carson’s memory supplement, but suspect a scam.

    I’m not close to CS students, so it’s hard to say what they might do beyond good ol’ caffeine.

  29. @Huxley:

    Interesting re Melatonin. Come to think of it I don’t know whether or not I dream in colour or not.

    I did try gingko biloba back in the day. IIRC it started cropping up in the press and ads in the early 90s and much was made of the fact that it was Big in Germany. Didn’t make much of an impression on me.

    And now I remember St John’s Wort. Didn’t make much of an impression either. And I have a baseline for that comparison having experimented briefly in the 90s with Fluoxetine to see if it could make me more of a blot upon civilized society than I already am. It did. I stopped.

    For a time I worked with a bunch of very bright professional gamblers who were heavily into 80s/90s style nootropics. I got the impression that one could rapidly spin out off-piste because soon find oneself dealing with uppers and downers and the vagaries of pharmacokinetics with varying time delays to reach steady state dosages or clear after stopping taking x or y or z. Reproducibility and predictability suffer.

    I’ll take a hard pass on Ben Carson’s patent brain booster, myself. Thinking Fast Mode FTW.

    What I do like these days is sunshine and walking. The Greek philosophers weren’t fools. The occasional shot of adrenaline from doing something a bit manic on the bike also helps.

  30. Zaphod:

    I’d forgotten that fluoxetine was effectively considered a brain booster by some, notably Dr. Peter Kramer and some crazy doctor in Wenatchee, Washington.

    During a bad patch in the 90s I took St. John’s Wort. It seemed to help, though even at the time I wondered if it was a placebo effect because I was doing *something*. I also started doing everything from weight lifting to swing dancing to Tony Robbins and pulled out of it.

    Lately my diet has gotten me off sugar and dairy (except for Cheat Days) and I find myself calmer than I’ve ever been. I wasn’t shooting for that, but I’ll take it.

  31. @Huxley:

    “I’d forgotten that fluoxetine was effectively considered a brain booster by some, notably Dr. Peter Kramer and some crazy doctor in Wenatchee, Washington.”

    It definitely gets the joint humming and the bubbles frothing early on. Can’t say as it does anything good for focus and concentration though. After a few weeks at steady-state, I ended up rather too detached. I agree with the view many now take in hindsight that SSRIs are a Very Blunt Instrument and not the universal panacea they were trumpeted as back when.

    “Lately my diet has gotten me off sugar and dairy (except for Cheat Days) and I find myself calmer than I’ve ever been. I wasn’t shooting for that, but I’ll take it.”

    Concur. I’ve experienced this, too. Ketosis FTW.

    Re Doing Something: That’s the trick isn’t it. Non-addictive, non-destructive kick-starters are best.

  33. Zaphod:

    A physician friend gave me a starter scrip for sertraline. It triggered a very uncomfortable manic episode which had me power-walking all over the hills in my San Franciso neighborhood until 2 am.

    I decided SSRIs weren’t for me. Which was just as well. The last thing I wanted was to end up on the psychiatrist merry-go-round. Though at the time everyone was on my case to do so.

    However, I am a stubborn person, which more often than not has paid off.

  34. “It triggered a very uncomfortable manic episode which had me power-walking all over the hills in my San Franciso neighborhood until 2 am.”

    Way to go, Mister Cassady! (Did you perchance meet any of those guys?)

    “However, I am a stubborn person, which more often than not has paid off.”

    It does pay off. Right up until you invade Russia.

    Singing on the flight from Moscow to Berlin, Katyusha
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn0qIkH6wlE

  35. It does pay off. Right up until you invade Russia.

    Zaphod:

    I only did that once.

    Sheesh.

    (Didn’t know the Katyusha story. H/T.)

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