You might want to tune into this event given at 7 PM tonight by Legal Insurrection.
That clever, wily, resistant belly fat
This news surprises me not at all:
In a mouse study, Australian researchers have mapped out what happens behind the scenes in fat tissue during intermittent fasting, showing that it triggers a cascade of dramatic changes, depending on the type of fat deposits and where they are located around the body.
Using state-of-the-art instruments, University of Sydney researchers discovered that fat around the stomach, which can accumulate into a ‘protruding tummy’ in humans, was found to go into ‘preservation mode’, adapting over time and becoming more resistant to weight loss.
And yeah, it’s only mice. But it may be quite relevant to people:
Dr. Larance said using a mouse model was a useful analogue ahead of studies in humans.
“Mouse physiology is similar to humans, but their metabolism is much faster, allowing us to observe changes more rapidly than in human trials, and examine tissues difficult to sample in humans,” he said.
Future research in mice and humans could uncover the mechanisms by which this resistance occurs and also which types of diet and other interventions may be best at tackling belly fat.
At least mice don’t have to get into skinny jeans. Then again, with COVID lockdowns, we’ve all managed to stay comfy in our sweats.
The Joe Biden pool
People are betting on how long it will be before Joe Biden is gently nudged out of the presidency for health reasons.
I’ve always felt that it will be later rather than sooner. I’m not sure what I mean by “later,” but I mean “as late as humanly possible.” Obviously, if some extraordinary meltdown were to happen, I suppose he’d have to be eased out and Kamala installed with great fanfare (although I’m not at all sure she’d be the one actually wielding the power). Although this charade of Joe’s competence has already gone on past the point we would have imagined possible just a few short years ago, the press’s capacity for “emperor’s new clothes” cooperation – and the public’s tolerance for it – has proven much greater than one would have guessed.
Who’s in charge now? I don’t think it’s Harris, as I said. Nor do I think it’s “Dr.” Jill, although she may indeed be in charge of shepherding Joe about and keeping him in line to a certain extent. I think the country is being run by a group of advisors who check in regularly with Barack Obama. After all, it was always clear that any Biden presidency would be Obama’s third term, shifted even further left.
So why bother to kick Joe out until it absolutely must be done? I can’t think of a single reason why. Delaying as long as possible keeps the malleable and cooperative Joe as a figurehead, instead of having a president with a mind of his/her own who might object to something the aides suggest. Keeping Joe in there for at least two years (or more) allows Kamala to run for two more terms even if she becomes president at that point. One could also make an argument that exposing her to too much public scrutiny too early would make people realize how unpleasant a character she is. A delay in removing Joe would also give the Democrats the ability to pretend that these health problems of his were of recent origin, and that the Democrats didn’t cynically allow a cognitively declining man to run while they knew full well that he was a mess and likely to get worse.
Really, I just can’t see what the rush to remove Joe would be all about.
Roundup
(1) Christopher Wray’s lips are sealed on Officer Sicknick’s cause of death. Do we even know if there’s been an autopsy? Will we ever know?:
“I certainly understand and respect and appreciate the keen interest in what happened to him — after all, he was here protecting all of you. And as soon as there is information that we can appropriately share, we want to be able to do that. But at the moment, the investigation is still ongoing,” Wray said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked if that meant the FBI “have not determined” the cause of Sicknick’s death.
“That means we can’t yet disclose a cause of death at this stage,” Wray said.
Grassley pressed on, asking Wray to confirm whether the FBI has determined a cause of death.
“I didn’t say that. We’re not at a point where we can disclose or confirm the cause of death,” Wray said.
You didn’t say what? You didn’t say anything other than some weaselly claptrap. My guess is that you’re searching frantically for a Trump supporter to pin it on, and you haven’t found one yet. I think if you never find one, you hope we’ll all just forget about it and move on.
(2) There are about 3 million missing children in the US since COVID began. Not the kind on milk cartons; the kind who haven’t signed onto any virtual learning while school is closed. It would be nice if they were all being home-schooled by loving parents, but I very much doubt it.
(3) The war against Dr. Seuss heats up.
(4) Texas drops the mask. Will women start wearing lipstick again?
Open thread 3/3/21
I’m baaaack! Yesterday’s shot took much longer than I thought it would – not the shot itself, but waiting in line in the car. By the time I got back I felt like chilling out rather than writing, and even fell asleep for a while. My arm’s sore and I’m a bit tired, as expected.
I know you’re all thirsting for more Bee Gees to start the day off, so here’s their first TV appearance in Australia. Barry is about 13 and the twins 10, and this is a song Barry wrote, although later they wrote nearly all their songs together. The twins look like the proverbial deer in the headlights here, but I think that’s because this was their first time on TV. They were already seasoned performers of many years at this point, and either were already – or were soon to become – the virtually sole support of their family of 7 (they had their teeth fixed later, as soon as they got enough money to do it).
This is six years later with “Spicks and Specks,” at around aged 19 (or just turned 20) for Barry, and 16 for the twins. It was their first big hit in Australia and New Zealand. I’d never heard of it till a few weeks ago. The family left Australia for their native England around this time, in order to advance the Bee Gees’ careers (they had dropped out of school at 15 for Barry and 13 for the twins). They found their first period of fame in short order with a whole bunch of other songs (mostly baroque pop or R&B) such as “New York Mining Disaster 1941” (it apparently inspired David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”) and “To Love Somebody” (later covered by well over 100 artists) Even back then, though, their songs were so varied it’s hard to choose just one or two as examples, because there was no song that could be representative of their work. Barry sings lead here in the earlier “Spicks and Specks” (the guy on the right in the photo is a backup musician who was part of band for a while):
And this represent a different mood. It’s also from 1966, although I only heard it for the first time recently. It’s atypical of their work, but there’s something about it that grabbed me (as do many Bee Gees songs) – perhaps its resemblance to a traditional folk song, in this case. This is Robin using his lower register, at the age of 16:
Gascon and Newsom, together at last
There’s now a recall effort underway involving Los Angeles County’s DA George Gascon, for his loathsome bait and switch. He is a disaster for LA, but I don’t know if the effort will be successful
I’ve already written about Gascon at some length here.
[NOTE: I’m leaving to get my second COVID shot now. It should take a while, because I have to drive a half hour each way. I hope to post more later today or this evening.]
[NOTE II: The title of this post refers to the fact that Governor Newsom is also facing a recall drive.]
Of all things for John Brennan to be “increasingly embarrassed” about…
…I wouldn’t have thought “being a white male” would be high on his list. But hey, what do I know about John Brennan’s inner life?
I doubt he’s embarrassed about much of anything, although he certainly should be.
Actually, Brennan’s not embarrassed about himself at all. He’s embarrassed on behalf of the class of men to which he apparently belongs but distances himself greatly from:
Brennan made the declaration during MSNBC’s “Deadline White House,” after former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) told host Nicolle Wallace, “I have never seen so many whiny white men calling themselves victims as I saw over the weekend at [the Conservative Political Action Conference]. I mean, these are all people who think they have a huge grievance from a position of significant privilege.”
And as an American, I’m embarrassed that Brennan ever held a position of power in this country.
Open thread 3/2/21
Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.
Remember Derek Chauvin? His trial is coming up
On March 8, 2021, jury selection will begin in the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin for the alleged murder of George Floyd, and the city and state governments are preparing for another round of violence, rioting, looting, and burning similar to that which followed Floyd’s death.
I’m sure the judge and jury won’t feel the least bit intimidated.
And of course it will be easy to find jurors who don’t already know that Chauvin is guilty. After all, “guilty” is what just about everyone has been saying from the start. I did a series of posts on what I consider strong exculpatory evidence (you can find some of them here), but how many people are even aware that such evidence exists? A fair trial, of course, is supposed to call attention to such evidence. But I suspect this one has been hopelessly tainted by the ferocity of the widespread rush to judgment.
The author of this piece concludes:
It’s time to call a halt to this farce and to move Derek Chauvin’s trial to a venue far away from the war zone formerly known as Minneapolis.
Agreed. The only problem is I don’t think there’s a place on earth far enough away to contain a pool of unbiased jurors. But most places would be better than Minneapolis.
Scott Johnson of Powerline has some information on the Goliath versus David aspects of the prosecution versus the defense:
At the behest of the mob, Governor Walz lifted responsibility for the prosecution from the office of the Hennepin County Attorney and assigned it to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. Ellison has named Assistant Attorney General Matthew Frank to lead the prosecution.
• Ellison’s office employs more than 130 attorneys. Despite the huge staff of attorney at his disposal, Ellison has called in reinforcements to assist them.
• This past June Ellison announced the appointment of four outside attorneys in private practice or serving as corporate counsel as special assistants on the case (press release here). The special assistants include Steve Schleicher of Maslon LLP, Jerry Blackwell of Blackwell Burke, both of Minneapolis, and Lola Velázquez-Aguilu, lead counsel for brain modulation [!] at Medtronic in Fridley.
• The fourth outside attorney is the star of the group: former Obama administration acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, now in private practice at Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C….
All the outside attorneys named in the case are serving Ellison’s office pro bono…
• Chauvin is represented by criminal defense attorney Eric Nelson. So far as I am aware, he has no outside help, pro bono or otherwise. If you’re looking for Atticus Finch in the case, Nelson will have to serve.
How many death threats do you think Eric Nelson has gotten so far?
Here’s a ray of light:
Judge Cahill is a former Assistant Hennepin County Attorney and a former criminal defense attorney. I have been favorably impressed with his rulings so far.
Trump gives a speech at CPAC
And it’s gotten a lot of attention.
Remember when ex-presidents would retire and ride off into the sunset, leaving public life? At least, the ones who served two terms always seemed to do it – but Trump hasn’t served two terms.
He hasn’t served two terms yet, that is. Maybe never. Maybe some day. That’s the question that keeps a lot of Democrats – and some Republicans – up nights.
Obama was a two-term president. But he only lay low for a short while, and only publicly. I have always felt he was directing things from behind the scenes more than Hillary or anyone else was.
I watched a part of Trump’s speech, but the whole thing can be found here and the video is here. As far as I can tell, the gist of it is this:
(1) No third party.
(2) Get rid of the worst RINOs and NeverTrumpers in the party and make the GOP into a lean, mean fighting machine.
(3) Election reform – real election reform, not the HR1 type.
(4) Joe is a disaster.
(5) Trump accomplished a lot.
(6) A Trump 2024 candidacy is up in the air.
Open thread
Close harmony: Part IIB (the Bee Gees – how do they make that sound?)
[NOTE: Part I can be found here and Part IIA here.]
As I’ve written before, until recently all I knew about the Bee Gees were a few of their disco-era songs and a vague recollection of longish hair, and I think I knew they wrote their own songs. I kind of liked those disco numbers but thought of them as a forgettable novelty. I was neutral about the group and I hadn’t listened to them in over forty years.
Then I was persuaded by a YouTube suggestion to click on one of their old videos, and was immediately stunned and captivated by the strength and near-hypnotic quality of their harmonies. Maybe their sound seemed so much more powerful now compared to back then because I wasn’t listening to them on a scratchy record anymore; instead, I was using a headset hooked up to a computer. But for whatever reason, this time when I heard the three sing together, it worked on me like a siren song (hopefully, without the rocks), and I wanted to listen over and over. I’d heard lots of harmonic singing and groups before that, but this was the only group that’s ever had that quasi-hypnotic effect on me, and I’ve learned since then that I’m far from alone in that reaction. It’s actually rather common.
What is it about? Do these guys cast spells on some people? And if so, how do they do it?
If all you know of the Bees songs are “Stayin’ Alive” and the other Saturday Night Fever songs – please have a listen to the following, just to take one example of hundreds I could offer. It’s an obscure one at that, a nearly-unknown song from their almost-unnoticed 1974 album “Mr Natural.” Neither the album nor the song was ever popular. It was released during a pre-disco time for the Bee Gees, when their fortunes had sunk quite low after early fame in the late 60s as baroque pop members of the British invasion.
When I came across the title of the song, “Had a Lot of Love Last Night,” it sounded to me as though this would be an upbeat fast-paced song with some sexy overtones. But I was stunned when it began, starting with a wordless “Ah” that sounds like an entire gospel choir. But it’s just the Bee Gees, singing a sublimely bittersweet elegy to love (I suggest headphones for listening):
I’ve read people who have speculated that the Bee Gees’ harmonies tap into something that relaxes the brain and the body, something uniquely soothing. As brothers, the trio’s voices had some genetic similarity and they had sung together since early childhood – but that’s true of the voices of most sibling groups (I wrote about that previously in Part I). However, the Bee Gees had two other characteristics that I believe made them unique even within that subgroup: they also had dramatic vocal distinctiveness from each other that co-existed with that similarity (you can see the same paradox in their looks, too). In addition, two of the brothers – Barry and Robin – were compelling lead singers whose voices were highly unusual and immediately recognizable and easily distinguishable both from each other and from everyone else. The third brother, Maurice, had a less distinctive but still beautiful voice that was a very flexible instrument with wide range, and he could fill in the blanks in whatever manner was required, tonally or otherwise, having a sixth sense of instinctively knowing exactly where to place his harmonies.
The song you just heard featured Barry Gibb – the tall one with the male-model 70s hair and the whitest of teeth – singing the lead in his natural voice. He was later known for his falsetto, of course, but he didn’t just have a single type of falsetto and he only used his falsetto in some of his songs (I’m using the past tense – although he, unlike his brothers, is still alive and still singing).
Barry had a squeaky/shouty falsetto which some people find annoying, heard mostly on the “Saturday Night Fever” tracks. But he also had a soft melodic falsetto that sometimes exhibited vibrato and sometimes a breathy tremolo. His falsetto was a very flexible instrument in tone, as well as a vehicle for extending his already-large range into soprano territory. It was used primarily for urgency (the squeaky falsetto) or emotional intensity and intimacy as well as vulnerability (the mellow or breathy one). But Barry also had a ringing and powerful chest voice and a beautiful head voice, both with an indefinable quality I would describe as “smoky with a hint of brassy” (that’s the voice he’s using for “Had a Lot of Love Last Night”). So, like Maurice, Barry had a lot of flexibility and many options with his voice.
Robin Gibb was the slender sensitive one with the narrow face (he died in 2012; his fraternal twin Maurice died in 2003). Robin was the group’s most frequent lead singer during the Bee Gees’ early days in the 1960s, and I loved his songs at the time – his voice got my immediate attention – without my having any idea whatsoever until over fifty years later that it had been the Bee Gees singing all those 60s songs like “I’ve Got To Get a Message to You,” those very same Bee Gees of later Saturday Night Fever fame (in this video the twins are about 18 and Barry 21; it also is probably lip-synced, because in those days most TV shows didn’t have the technical capacity to do otherwise):
How could that be? The group’s voices and songs in the two eras sounded so unalike that, when I recently learned they were the very same people, it was as bizarre to me as if Chopin had gone on to morph into Tchaikovsky. But in the 60s the Bee Gees gave us baroque pop ballads featuring Robin’s high quaver (and of course the brothers’ gorgeous harmonies) while in the late 70s there was the funky beat-driven dance music that mostly starred Barry and his falsetto with the other brothers in supporting roles. Sometimes Barry and Robin exchanged lead lines in a single song, to great effect (with Robin often singing the more introspective, dramatic, and emotional parts).
And the group went on songwriting, singing, and changing for several decades more, although I didn’t know about that until recently either.
Robin’s voice was even more distinctive than Barry’s, and that’s saying something. Once Robin starts singing, I find it nearly impossible to stop listening. His voice was almost otherworldly, with something that’s been variously described as a warble or a quaver or a fast vibrato (sometimes with a bit of tremolo as well). He also had a very slender and almost delicate appearance, a homely-yet-handsome appeal, and used a characteristic gesture (lampooned at times) of cupping his hand around his ear, the better to hear his own voice in the days before ear monitors. The gesture had the effect of communicating intensity and concentration, of a singer who didn’t care how he looked but was lost in the song (it also reminds me of some of the opening gestures of a role I once danced as a teenager in the ballet “Les Sylphides” to Chopin’s Prelude, a version of which you can view here).
Here’s a very short example of Robin’s early singing:
And here’s the wonderfully informative Fil, talking about Robin’s voice and why it appealed emotionally to so many people. Robin sometimes said that he sang with his heart rather than his voice, and that goes along with what Fil is saying here:
Robin never stopped performing solos or solo turns, the latter usually within songs in which Barry took a more prominent role. He usually sang in an ultra-high register that was not a falsetto, although he could also sing very very low and sometimes did. But it was that quavery warble of Robin’s that touched so many hearts with its pathos. Some people find his voice off-putting, but his fans find it surpassingly beautiful and strongly moving, the voice of a sorrowful angel about to break into a sob but never quite getting there. I’m one of his fans.
As for Maurice, here’s a sample of one of the rare songs on which Maurice sings lead. Most of Mo’s solos were in his lower range, but he usually took the highest harmony when the three sang together. This song is from 1981, and if you listen you might agree with me that in his upper register Maurice had a certain Beach Boys vibe. This version is almost certainly being lip-synced for some TV show, but I’m showing it to let you see Maurice’s personality. He didn’t need to lip-sync to create his sound in person, but I can’t find any other live versions of this song on YouTube so this will have to do. He could also sing falsetto, but usually didn’t and almost always eschewed vibrato or tremolo, which gave his voice a quality that contrasted with and complemented and filled out the sounds made by Barry and Robin. It’s not really surprising that, when Maurice died in 2003, the group was basically finished, because without Maurice to ground them their sound was incomplete:
But the voices of Barry and Robin, and to a lesser extent Maurice, have another quality I find hard to describe but which I think is key to their mesmerizing effect on some people. The best I can do to describe it is to say that each voice has extra internal harmonics. That is, each single voice – especially those of Barry and Robin – seems to my ear to resonate with itself, as though within the one note the person is singing there are harmonic overlays as well, more so than with most other voices. This gives their solo and trio singing a complexity that the ear reads as intriguing and full, and for some listeners (me included) that has an addictive quality all its own. The entire effect of the three together is that of a “wall of sound” constructed through their voices.
I think that was and still is the main source of their vocal magic.
[NOTE: Not done yet – I’ve got a lot more to say. So…to be continued…]