I bring you – Ozzy Man reviewing Horse Girl.
As one YouTube commenter wrote: “This is amazing and disturbing at the same time.”
And in the words of another: “I don’t think I’ve ever been so impressed by such a useless skill!”
Emotion in music
Among my drafts I have an enormous number of fragmented ones about the connection between music and emotion. It’s not something I really understand, but I keep trying to write about it nonetheless. I think some people are immune to that connection or at least less likely to be affected emotionally by music. But I certainly always have found music emotional, and some music far more emotional than other music.
By “emotional” I don’t mean a unitary thing, either. Happy, sad, excited, nostalgic, regretful, calm – those are just a few of the emotions music can stir. And I also have noticed that some music is what might be called Apollonian and some Dionysian, and that this distinction is present across and within many genres.
This isn’t going to be the definitive post on any of this. But it’s perhaps a short introduction to what I hope may become a series.
I know that there are a bunch of videos at YouTube in which Oliver Sacks explores some of these issues. Here’s one that I found quite intriguing (I haven’t watched most of them yet):
Apparently the brain knows.
Which brings us to the Bee Gees – doesn’t everything? I came across the following reaction video yesterday to their song “More Than a Woman.” I’ve cued up a small part of it in which the two music-loving Georgian brothers (not the US Georgia; the other one) discuss their reactions to the song and to the Bee Gees in general:
They’re not alone in that reaction. There is a set of people who react emotionally in this way to the Bee Gees (I’ve heard some people liken them to a pleasant drug), just as there’s a set who react as Sacks did to Bach. It’s not everyone, of course, but both groups are sizeable.
And there’s some overlap between the groups. Me, for example. I react that way to certain pieces by Bach and to certain songs by the Bee Gees – which may seem odd but hey, that’s the way it is for me. Some day I may try to explain it, but for now I’ll merely note it.
January 6th and seeing the shape of the stork
When the incursion into the Capitol occurred, it just didn’t make sense to me. The Trump rally was going to be yuuge. The security should have been massive. The National Guard was offered and refused. The security arrangements were not much more than for a normal day in D.C.
From the start, the actual events of January 6th were surrounded with much confusion and the incident was obviously being used for political gain. As time went on, many of the initial “facts” were refuted (for example, the supposed killing of Officer Sicknick), and other obvious questions were never answered. I asked some of those basic questions back on January 7, only one day after the incursion, and most of them have yet to be answered with any clarity. Here’s the list:
(1) How many people actually gained entrance to the Capitol, and who were they?
(2) Why was Ashli Babbitt killed?
(3) How violent were the protesters? Did any have weapons, and were they using them on police?
(4) What did police do to stop them from gaining access to the Capitol?
There’s a lot more in that January 7 post, including this:
It is very curious that this security breach was successful. Surely, with such a large crowd, it should have been anticipated that a splinter group of more radical people might break off and try something like this, and the security forces should have been prepared…
There also are reports (I don’t know if they’re true) that some Capitol police enabled the demonstrators: “Capitol Police were not armed in riot gear to begin with, as law enforcement on crowd control duty have been at almost every large protest against police brutality in D.C. in recent months. When the mob breached the guardrails, the building was locked down, yes. Tear-gas canisters were shot, and yes, some police inside the chambers drew their guns. But others tried to “let them do their thing,” according to the New York Times. Videos also emerged of some police personnel opening up the barricades and taking selfies with the intruders once they were inside the building.”
We still know far less about this than we should, and far less than the government knows. Just to take two obvious examples: we still don’t know the name of the officer who killed Ashli Babbitt and the exact circumstances, and there still has been no release of the enormous numbers of surveillance videos of the entire demonstration.
But even without that information, now we can better see the shape and pattern of the event. It’s far from clear, but it’s more clear, and we know much more about the possibility of previous FBI involvement with and possible incitement of some of the groups that were involved. That’s an especially awful aspect of the whole thing, but knowing about it affords a conceptual satisfaction that comes from getting more pieces of the puzzle.
I’ve already written about the Whitmer kidnapping plot, the FBI, and what it means for January 6th. But here’s an article that connects a few more dots. An excerpt:
The problem is not that we’re going to find out that the January 6 case is going to be full of FBI agents and informants, just like the Whitmer kidnapping case. The problem is we are starting to understand this is standard procedure for counterterrorism. This is a 20-year-old charade the FBI brass has been pulling.
Actually, it’s much older than 20 years. But let’s just say it’s very old.
There’s something satisfying about seeing a possible bigger picture, even if that picture is an ugly one. It reminds me of something written by Isak Dinesen, explained here:
In a vignette entitled “The Roads of Life”, the author remembers a story she used to hear as a child, where a man hears a terrible noise and goes out in the night to investigate, falls in ditches and goes through all sorts of problems. As his trajectory of pain is described, the storyteller also draws a little map detailing all his troubles.
The punch line is that, the next morning, the man wakes up and sees a stork. This is also the shape that the map has made—the images on the map end up combining to create a picture of a stork. Coincidence? We think not. The Baroness uses the image of the man falling and getting up, over and over again, in order to make the stork’s feet, to comfort herself in times of trouble.
Here’s a quote from Dinesen:
The tight place, the dark pit in which I am now lying, of what bird is it the talon? When the design of my life is completed, shall I, shall other people see a stork?
—Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa
In this case it may be a vile stork, but now at least we believe we can see its shape better.
COVID overview Part I: trying to make sense of the whole “masks for the vaccinated” thing
[NOTE: This is the first part of a planned 2-parter.]
First of all, we have the politics of the COVID response:
(1) Authorities like to be authoritarian and order people around. So there is psychological satisfaction from it.
(2) It gets the population used to taking orders from authorities, which is also useful – for the authorities.
(3) COVID-fear has been very good to the Democrats in the political sense, and they want that to continue. In particular, they are hoping to use it to justify the same sort of looser rules on voting protocols that helped them win in 2020.
(4) It has the potential to further the divisions and hatred in the country, which I believe the left sees as a plus.
But what of the logic behind these newer restrictions, in the non-political sense? You may think there is no such logic, but I don’t agree. It may be a logic that’s hard to follow, and like me you may disagree with some of the reasoning behind it. But a logic is there, and I’ll take a stab at a list of its basic premises:
(1) People should get vaccinated because vaccination is highly protective against COVID.
(2) But even vaccination is only 90 to 95 percent protective, and we don’t know for how long.
(3) That means that some vaccinated people will inevitably be getting COVID. As the vaccination rate increases (and it’s already fairly high now), the number of vaccinated people getting COVID will increase, or at least the percentage of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated people getting COVID or merely testing positive for COVID will increase.
(4) Many of these vaccinated people testing positive will be asymptomatic.
(5) There is beginning to be some evidence that with the Delta variant – although not the previous variants – some unvaccinated-but-COVID-positive people (with or without symptoms) are shedding a lot of virus. That evidence is far from clear, but it concerns us because it means that vaccinated people may have COVID and not know it and might be contagious to others, both vaccinated and unvaccinated.
(6) Masking indoors offers at least some protection against the transmission of COVID.
(7) Therefore asking vaccinated people to mask indoors makes sense.
There are many points along the way where you might disagree with the premise or premises and think the authorities are either lying or mistaken or both. But I think I’ve correctly stated the reasoning of many of the people who support this and who are not merely political operatives using COVID for political reasons.
But there are other underlying issues in the COVID response debate that aren’t just political, although they definitely impact on politics. They are deeper, broader, and more philosophical, and they have to do with liberty and risk. Liberty involves risk, but even without liberty there is no way to eliminate risk. The basic question is how far one is willing to go to reduce risk – or for the illusion of reducing risk – and who is allowed to make the decision, the individual or the state, and under what conditions.
That will be discussed in Part II.
[ADDENDUM: I want to reiterate – in case there is any misunderstanding – that these are not my premises. I am trying to explain the premises under which some people are operating. The first list contains the premises of the political activists who are into the politics of it, and the second list contains the premises of some people who are more sincere and less political about it (such as many of my friends).]
Open thread 7/31/21
John Hayward talks about double standards, January 6th, and Congressional elitism
Bookworm provides the details of Hayward’s Twitter thread on the Congressional hearings about the events of January 6th. Here’s some of what Hayward wrote, but I suggest reading the whole thing (at Bookworm’s, where it’s easier to follow):
The 1/6 rioters should be treated with the same severity as Black Lives Matter rioters. Since that is not remotely possible, all else is political theater and raw exercises of power, and I am weary of pretenses to the contrary.
I’m weary of our ruling class sending the message that your home, business, and personal safety are at the mercy of violent Demcorat-approved grievance groups, but don’t you DARE do anything that makes the aristocracy in D.C. uncomfortable.
I’m tired of hearing the Abolish the Police Party demand limitless scrutiny and aggressive defunding of the police who protect the rest of us, but unquestioning support and increased funding for the police who protect THEM. Why not protect the Capitol with social workers, huh?
There are Democrat-controlled parts of the country where theft has literally been decriminalized, and not just during Democrat-approved riots. You have to stand and watch helplessly while your business is looted every day. But the rules are different for THEIR place of business.
Much more at the link.
Speaking of double standards, it’s all explainable if you understand that these people have fully embraced the old “ends justify the means” mentality. And the more intellectually-inclined among them have cloaked it in neo-Marxist power-struggle reasoning combined with postmodern philosophy that says there is no truth and no objectivity, so the only standard for behavior is to argue for whatever benefits your group’s attaining power.
Sometimes the argument will be A, sometimes it will be not-A. But any contradiction is an illusion, because it’s all good if it helps you attain the power that is the only coin of the realm.
And speaking of science: the study on which the CDC based its new mask recommendations
There’s some news about the study that purports to explain why the CDC changed its mask recommendations to saying that even vaccinated people need to wear masks indoors in higher-COVID areas. Here’s a link to the actual study results.
I noticed a couple of interesting things on reading it. The first is that it’s a single study set in Barnstable County, Massachusetts after a series of July 4th holiday celebrations that drew many people to outside and inside venues in order to celebrate. The second is that almost all the COVID patients were male, and the median age was 42. That struck me as atypical (especially the huge male skew). But knowing the Cape somewhat it doesn’t take but a moment to realize that Barnstable County is dominated by Provincetown, which in turn is highly gay-friendly and has long been a center of gay culture. So of course the population there for the holidays is going to be heavily male and perhaps younger than typical in most towns. This may not matter at all in terms of the study’s results, but it’s a somewhat atypical population and that should be noted.
This is of interest:
The findings in this report are subject to at least four limitations. First, data from this report are insufficient to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, including the Delta variant, during this outbreak. As population-level vaccination coverage increases, vaccinated persons are likely to represent a larger proportion of COVID-19 cases. Second, asymptomatic breakthrough infections might be underrepresented because of detection bias. Third, demographics of cases likely reflect those of attendees at the public gatherings, as events were marketed to adult male participants; further study is underway to identify other population characteristics among cases, such as additional demographic characteristics and underlying health conditions including immunocompromising conditions…Finally, Ct values obtained with SARS-CoV-2 qualitative RT-PCR diagnostic tests might provide a crude correlation to the amount of virus present in a sample and can also be affected by factors other than viral load.††† Although the assay used in this investigation was not validated to provide quantitative results, there was no significant difference between the Ct values of samples collected from breakthrough cases and the other cases. This might mean that the viral load of vaccinated and unvaccinated persons infected with SARS-CoV-2 is also similar. However, microbiological studies are required to confirm these findings.
So if I’m interpreting this correctly, the study didn’t directly measure viral load, but the researchers concluded from Ct values (see this for an explanation of what a Ct value is) that there might be a correlation with viral loads.
Note also point number three, which I’ll repeat here:
Third, demographics of cases likely reflect those of attendees at the public gatherings, as events were marketed to adult male participants; further study is underway to identify other population characteristics among cases, such as additional demographic characteristics and underlying health conditions including immunocompromising conditions.
They don’t say exactly what they’re talking about, but reading between the lines I infer that they are talking about gay men and the possibility of “immunocompromising conditions” such as AIDS, HIV, or medication for either of those things. None of this reflects on gay people themselves, but I question whether it’s wise to extrapolate from a single study at all, and certainly from one involving a particular demographic that is very possibly atypical in relevant ways such as immune status.
Other interesting findings include this: “Among persons with breakthrough infection, 274 (79%) reported signs or symptoms, with the most common being cough, headache, sore throat, myalgia, and fever” – in other words, basic flulike symptoms. Only five people were hospitalized (four of them vaccinated) and none died. So the hospitalization rate in a symptomatic population (which was almost certainly not everyone infected) was about one and a half percent among symptomatic breakthrough patients, which does not seem at all high. The death rate so far is zero.
It was always stated that between 5 and 10 percent of vaccinated people were vulnerable to getting COVID, depending on the type of immunization used. So these figures alone don’t seem to justify what the CDC is doing. It would be helpful to also know how many people attended the festivities, but all I’ve read is “thousands.” That covers a lot – could be a few thousand or hundreds of thousands. Without knowing that, we can’t know what the infection rate was among the unvaccinated or the vaccinated, and whether either was higher than expected or about what might be expected.
Open thread 7/30/21
Just a few relaxed minutes of playing acoustic guitar and joking around – oh, and harmonizing:
Queen Pelosi orders the Palace Guard to arrest visitors to the House side of the Capitol who don’t wear masks and refuse to leave
US Capitol Police officers will arrest visitors and staff members who refuse to comply with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s renewed COVID-19 mask mandate — heightening tensions with Republicans who call the mandate an unscientific power trip.
Police won’t arrest lawmakers or people on the Senate side of the Capitol, where masks are voluntary despite a resurgence of coronavirus cases linked to the Delta variant of the virus.
A bulletin for police says, “If a visitor or staff member fails to wear a mask after a request is made to do so, the visitor or staff shall be denied entry to the House Office Buildings or House-side of the U.S. Capitol. Any person who fails to either comply or leave the premises after being asked to do so would be subject to an arrest for Unlawful Entry.”
And what is the law that they are violating by refusing to wear a mask? There is no such statute. But they will be charged with “unlawful entry” under this DC law:
§ 22–3302. Unlawful entry on property.
(b) Any person who, without lawful authority, shall enter, or attempt to enter, any public building, or other property, or part of such building, or other property, against the will of the lawful occupant or of the person lawfully in charge thereof or his or her agent, or being therein or thereon, without lawful authority to remain therein or thereon shall refuse to quit the same on the demand of the lawful occupant, or of the person lawfully in charge thereof or his or her agent, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine of not more than the amount set forth in § 22-3571.01, imprisonment for not more than 6 months, or both.
So apparently Nancy Pelosi – or whoever is “in charge” of the part of the building she’s talking about (the House) – can be ordered out as she wishes, and if that person refuses he or she can be charged with a misdemeanor and fined or even imprisoned. In other words, it’s misdemeanor trespassing, like the charge against so many of the January 6th people who entered the building peacefully that day but were tracked down later and arrested anyway.
Is Pelosi planning to hold the new offenders for many months without bail, like the January 6th accused?
Some “People’s House.” Note that the Senate isn’t doing this – so far.
Did you know that Joe Biden used to drive an 18-wheeler?
Career politician President Biden is being mocked for claiming he used to drive an 18-wheeler truck — with the White House only able to show he was once a passenger in one.
The 48-year political veteran made the claim while visiting a Mack Truck facility in Pennsylvania on Wednesday.
“I used to drive an 18-wheeler, man,” the 78-year-old commander-in-chief told staff, video of the exchange shows — with him clarifying that he “got to” drive one.
Puts me in mind of this, minus the charm:
The return of the mask: the CDC and the Biden administration keep saying to follow the science. But what science?
During the Trump administration, the left demanded the most rigorous of clinical trials and controls before any possible treatment that the right – and Trump in particular – might have suggested was possibly helpful in fighting COVID. And yet this is the situation today:
The nation’s top infectious disease expert [Fauci] says the Indian ‘Delta’ Covid variant has the same viral levels in vaccinated people who have breakthrough infections as in those who are unvaccinated…
But the CDC has yet to publicly share new research on Delta transmission among the vaccinated that would back up its new mask guidance and outside experts are calling for the agency to show them the data.
Data? You don’t need no steenking data from us. We’re the CDC! We’ll show it to you someday:
A citation in the updated masking guidance simply reads, ‘CDC COVID-19 Response Team, unpublished data, 2021.’
These data come from investigations of recent Delta-caused outbreaks, in which researchers compared infections among vaccinated and unvaccinated people, according to the Washington Post.
The findings will be ‘published imminently’ per reporting from The Post.
Some scientists – actual, bona fide scientists – would like to check it out rather than take it on faith:
They’re making a claim that people with delta who are vaccinated and unvaccinated have similar levels of viral load, but nobody knows what that means,’ Dr Gregg Gonsalves, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health, told The Post.
‘It’s meaningless unless we see the data.’
Other experts aren’t convinced that a higher viral load actually leads to Delta’s transmission among vaccinated people.
There’s a whole chain of assumptions here by the CDC. The first is that the CDC’s data, whatever it is, holds up and that with the Delta strain the vaccinated and unvaccinated who get COVID have the same viral load. The second is that with Delta the nasal viral load really does reliably determine transmissibility, and that this means that both groups are equally likely to spread the disease to others. The third is that masking would significantly protect from such spreading with Delta. The fourth is that the Delta variant will cause a rise in serious cases and deaths and not just in cases and/or positive test results. The fifth is that there are a very significant number of breakthrough COVID cases in the vaccinated in this country, enough to justify requiring their masking.
I’m probably leaving out a few assumptions, but you get the idea.
More:
‘I feel like nasal viral load is one part of a lot of other parts’ that determine how infectious a person is, biostatistician Natalie Dean told The Post.
Dean added that she thinks other important factors may be how much virus is present in a patient’s throat or lungs…
…[T]he CDC is not tracking less-severe breakthrough infections. In May, the agency switched its strategy to only investigate and report those infections that cause hospitalization or death
Scientists have critiqued this move for leaving the U.S. without crucial data to monitor the cases caused by Delta and other variants.
Apparently this recent “masks even for the vaccinated” proclamation was also based on a study from India that was initially rejected by a Nature Portfolio Journal and is currently out for “revision”:
The study in question from researchers in India analyzed vaccine breakthrough in over 100 healthcare workers and claims to show that a COVID-19 Delta variant infection generates a higher viral load in comparison to other variants.
Despite no mention in the study of viral loads from the variant against unvaccinated individuals, the CDC cited it in yesterday’s updated brief as evidence that the Delta variant is transmissible from a vaccinated individual with a breakthrough infection.
This study does not compare vaccinated viral loads to unvaccinated viral loads; it compares Delta viral loads to viral loads in other variants and finds them to be higher. And the vaccination involved in India is AstraZeneca, not used in the US and known to be less effective against COVID than Pfizer and Moderna, which are used here. In addition, the abstract to the article says that “severe disease in fully vaccinated HCW [health care workers] was rare.” So, even if ultimately approved for publication, the relevance of this article to the situation here is highly suspect.
I can’t say exactly where I think the threshold should lie for a recommendation for restrictions like this, but I can say that I don’t think it has been met in this case at all. And on these slender reeds they base a recommendation for the vaccinated to mask up in places experiencing an upswing. Not only that, but a lot of people are taking this to mean that vaccines “don’t work,” which discourages vaccination rather than encouraging it.
What’s going on? Is it just that the authorities are in love with the sound of their own authoritative voices, addicted to restricting liberty and to telling people what to do? And to feeling oh-so-virtuous as they make their proclamations and get people accustomed to the habit of obedience? I think it’s at least partly that. But I think another reason is that they are terrified that the numbers will go up under their watch, and that it will have negative political repercussions for their side. Of course, all this back and forth, masking and unmasking and masking again, will almost certainly have negative political repercussions for them, too.