Seen around the 'net

The Archdruid is blogging again, at Ecosophia.  It's long, but he covers a lot of what's happening right now and will make you think.

Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber - Sonata IV in C Major for Trumpet and Strings

Today is the birthday of Franz Biber, one of the greatest composers for violin.  His reputation in the 17th Century was unsurpassed, as he not only was a virtuoso performer (playing for the Emperor Leopold among others) but as a composer and publisher.  He was noted for his technique on the violin, opening the door to a new approach that allowed baroque violinists to reach new heights.

Much of his music was sacred, written in his post as Kapelmeister of Salzburg Cathedral.  This means that the style is somewhat out of place for today's ear (well, not mine so much, but you know how strange I am).  Today's selection includes baroque trumpet which shows a range of his music that you don't often hear.

Alternatives

Blake Shelton - I Lived It

Today is Hulk Hogan's 65th birthday.  As a birthday shout-out to the Hulkster, here's a song about wrestling.  Hollywood was fake, wrestling was real ...



I Lived It (songwriters: Rhett Akins, Ashley Gorley, Ben Hayslip, and Ross Copperman):

Daddy drove the wheels off a flatbed Ford
Flies found the hole in the old screen door
Granny said the dress that my sister wore
To church wasn't long enough 

Momma poured grease in a Chrisco can
Put a hundred thousand miles on a Sears box fan
Uncle Joe put tobacco on my hand
Where them yellow jacket's torn me up
And I ain't making this up 

Oh, you think I'm talking crazy
In a different language you might not understand
Oh, that's alright
That's just the kind of life that made me who I am
Just taking my mind on a visit
Back in time 'cause I miss it
You wouldn't know how to love it like I love it
Unless you lived it
And man, I lived it 

Granddaddy smoked Salems with the windows up
Drove me around in the back of that truck
We drank from the hose and spit in the cup
We all survived somehow 

Them old Duke boys, they're flattening their heels
Hollywood was fake, wrestling was real
Wouldn't dream of spending that two dollar bill
From pushing a lawnmower ‘round
I go back there right now 

Oh, you think I'm talking crazy
In a different language you might not understand
Oh, that's alright
That's just the kind of life that made me who I am
Just taking my mind on a visit
Back in time 'cause I miss it
You wouldn't know how to love it like I love it
Unless you lived it
And man, I lived it
Oh man, I lived it 

Oh, you think I'm talking crazy
In a different language you might not understand
Oh, that's alright
That's just the kind of life that made me who I am
Just taking my mind on a visit
Back in time 'cause I miss it
You wouldn't know how to love it like I love it
Unless you lived it
And man, I lived it
Oh man, I lived it

More surgery

The Queen Of The World is in for dental surgery (again) this morning. Posting will be light.

The scientific crisis of reproducibility

I first ran across the Journal of Irreproducible Results back in the 1980s, but it was already 30 years old then.  It was a funny science spoof magazine publishing goofy pseudo-scientific papers like The Optimum Number Of Friends In The Information Age.  It ranged from chuckle worthy to belly laugh, but only if you were a nerd.

The premise of the magazine is that some papers could only be published there, as they could never be replicated.  Well, it seems that this may be standard operating procedure for much of the scientific literature:

An ambitious project that set out nearly 5 years ago to replicate experiments from 50 high-impact cancer biology papers, but gradually shrank that number, now expects to complete just 18 studies.

It seems that it's expensive to replicate experiments and so the project is scaling back in the face of lack of funding. This during a period where there is increasing discussion that perhaps a majority of the published papers are spurious, and when scientific paper retraction is at an all time high.

Woah

$43M in cash found in Nigerian apartment.  And I thought that all those emails were fake ...

You may not be interested in birthdays

But birthdays are interested in you.  Well, me at least.

Bah.  As Doc Holiday once said, I'm in my prime.



The post title, of course paraphrases Leon Trotsky's rather blood-soaked saying that while you might not be interested in war, war is interested in you.  I wonder what old Leon thought of birthdays?  I'm sort of okay with someone redistributing mine to someone who needs them more ...

Money does grow on trees after all

At least for this dog:

It all started when Negro discovered the school’s store on campus. Students will go there during their breaks and purchase things. 

This included cookies that they would feed to Negro. 

But the students weren’t the only ones learning things on the school grounds. Negro discovered what commerce is in that store. He figured out by watching the students that if you give something, you get something in return.

The dog put two and two together, and started showing up at the store with a leaf.  To buy his own cookies.

If you look closely you'll see his paw on a leaf that he'd just brought.

“He comes for cookies every day,” store attendant Gladys Barreto told The Dodo. “He always pays with a leaf. It is his daily purchase.”

They only let him get two cookies a day, to keep him from getting fat.  I love everything about this story.

No really, I'm sure it will fit

Juán García de Zéspedes - Convidando está la noche

Mexico's first composer is likely to have been Juán García de Zéspedes, born 2 years before Hernan Cortez conquered the Aztecs.  Born in Pueblo, he may have been indian.  But he had a good singing voice and was trained by the Fathers at the Pueblo cathedral where he eventually became the choir director.

A moment of Zen

Last week's ride.

Photo by The Queen Of The World

Off to a Jimmy Buffett concert now.  Hopefully I won't blow out my flip flop ...

Alabama - Mountain Music

Photo by The Queen Of The World

Last weekend the Queen Of The World and I climbed on the Harley and road to Morgantown, WV for the Mountainfest bike rally.  It's a beautiful, scenic and windy ride and the rally was small but a lot of fun.  While we were there we went to the headline concert by the country supergroup Alabama.  I'd forgotten just how great their music was, which is a statement on my fading memory.  How else fo you explain forgetting this:

40 number 1 singles
10 number 1 albums
75 Million albums sold
3 5x platinum albums
3 4x platinum albums
4 double platinum albums
More ACM and CMA awards than you can shake a stick at
A Start on Hollywood's Walk Of Fame
Billboard Country Music artist of the 1980s
ACM Artist of the Decade

And oh by the way two Grammys, including one for this song.  An you can imagine at a venue called Mountainfest in West Virginia (in the hometown of the WV Mountaineers), this song had the crowd rocking.  So much so, in fact, that they sang it again as an encore.

Photo by The Queen Of The World

They are a very likable band.  Over the years they have donated over $70M to St. Jude's CHildren's Hospital, perhaps the single largest donation by a single private entity.

Mountain Music (Songwriter: Randy Owen):

Oh, play me some mountain music
Like grandma and grandpa used to play
Then I'll float on down the river
To a Cajun hideaway 

Drift away like Tom Sawyer
Ride a raft with ol' Huck Finn
Take a nap like Rip Van Winkle
Daze dreamin' again 

Oh, play me some mountain music
Like grandma and grandpa used to play
Then I'll float on down the river
To a Cajun hideaway 

Swim across the river, just to prove that I'm a man
Spend the day bein' lazy, just bein' nature's friend
Climb a long tall hick'ry bend it over, skinnin' cats
Playin' baseball with chert rocks, usin' sawmill slabs for bats 

Play some back home, come on music
That comes from the heart
Play somethin' with lots of feelin'
'Cause that's where music has to start 

Oh, play me some mountain music
Like grandma and grandpa used to play
Then I'll float on down the river
To a Cajun hideaway, hey hey 

Oh play me mountain music
Oh play me mountain music

It was actually less a concert than a singalong.  Everybody knew all the words, and that even includes me although it's been a long time since I've listened much to their music.  I think that's something that I'm going to change, adding them to my playlists.  They had the crowd rocking to May The Circle Be Unbroken, and while that's a song that lends itself to raucous singalong, they did it particularly well.

Maybe they have something on Donald Trump now

The Washington Post gives Trump's statement that he would "bring jobs back" four Pinocchios.

Your Friday feel-good stories

A week or two ago, a story made the rounds about how the entire town of North Platte turned out to feed a National Guard unit that was returning from training:

Col. Jaskolski, a veteran of the Iraq war, is commander of the 142nd Field Artillery Brigade of the Arkansas Army National Guard. For three weeks earlier this summer, the 142nd had been conducting an emergency deployment readiness exercise in Wyoming, training and sleeping outdoors, subsisting on field rations. Now it was time for the 700 soldiers to return to their base. 

A charter bus company had been hired for the 18-hour drive back to Arkansas. The Army had budgeted for a stop to get snacks. The bus company determined that the soldiers would reach North Platte, in western Nebraska, around the time they would likely be hungry. The company placed a call to the visitors’ bureau: Was there anywhere in town that could handle a succession of 21 buses, and get 700 soldiers in and out for a quick snack? 

North Platte said yes. North Platte has always said yes.

During World War II the troop trains would stop for water in North Platte, and the town would feed them.  A couple million of them over the course of the war.  People remembered.

This story made me think of the troop greeters in Bangor Maine near where I grew up:

BANGOR, Me. — Shortly before 11 on a recent Monday night, Cathy Czarnecki made sure the macadamia nut cookies were on the table of treats in a room at Bangor International Airport. The commercial passengers had all left, but 260 soldiers would soon arrive to a welcome that few of them expected. 

“Here they come!” someone shouted, and a dozen or so volunteers went out into the hallway and applauded as a line of soldiers in desert camouflage and tan boots poured into the small terminal. 

“Thank you for your service,” one man said to a soldier while shaking his hand. “Welcome to Maine,” another greeter said.

The tarmac at the airport there was built for Dow Air Force Base, which hosted B-52s.  It's the most eastern major runway in the United States, and so flights returning troops from the Middle East would land there to refuel.  Or planes on their way out.

The plane on that Monday night brought troops from bases in California, Nevada, Utah and Washington, and was headed to Ramstein Air Base in Germany and then to the Middle East. It was the 1,774th flight greeted since May 2003, with 335,195 men and women and 35 military dogs having passed through the airport. 

“Use a cellphone, call home,” Mr. Knight said as he doled them out. “Have something,” he added, motioning to the food. 

Lt. Col. Eric Shalita, 43, did both, helping himself to a powdered donut after calling his wife and two daughters at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. “It was amazing,” Colonel Shalita said. “We were completely not expecting this.”

The troop greeters are there at all hours of the day or night, and in all weather.  PBS did a show about them ten years ago or so.  It may have been the last time I watched PBS, because Dad called me and told me it was on.

Things that make you go "Hmmmm"

Remember the Usual Suspects® saying that they can ban AR-15s because the Second Amendment only applied to what was available at the time?

pic.twitter.com/tRPaKjIFgT

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) August 1, 2018

Is the 9th Circuit regaining its sanity?

First it ruled that the right to keep and bear arms means what it says.  Now it says that the Police have to protect Trump rallies:

The suit's 20 plaintiffs claim in a lawsuit that police knowingly ordered them to leave through an exit where protesters were waiting, despite the existence of a safer route and other exits, the San Francisco Chroniclereported last week. 

... 

On Friday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said, if the allegations are true, “the officers acted with deliberate indifference to a known and obvious danger” and violated the constitutional rights of Trump supporters.

I believe that this is one of the Signs of the Apocalypse.

Rest in peace, Captain Dickson

One of the Tuskegee Airmen, lost in action in 1944.  His remains have just been recovered and identified.

All we have of freedom 

all we use or know 

this our fathers bought for us  

long and long ago.

- Rudyard Kipling

Genius Award

Florida man wasn't drinking and driving.  He was only drinking at stop signs:

According to TCPalm, the 69-year-old was pulled over at a McDonald's drive-thru on June 27 after a woman said a vehicle behind her kept hitting her rear bumper.  

Stevens said he’s never had a valid Florida driver's license and deputies noticed an open bottle of liquor in the passenger seat of his car. Deputies said Stevens smelled of alcohol and said he felt "pretty good." He also told deputies he was drinking Jim Beam bourbon from the bottle found in the passenger seat, then gave arguably the worst (or best) excuse ever. 

“He further explained that he was not drinking while the car was moving and only when he stopped for stop signs and traffic signals,” the arrest affidavit states.

The news report does not say if, when he was asked to walk a straight line, he replied "hold mah beer".

It's not "Socialized Healthcare"

It's "Political Healthcare":

The story of Oliver Cameron, born with a deadly heart condition and saved by surgeons at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH), is an inspiring testament to the refusal of two parents to accept anything less than state-of-the-art medical treatment for their baby. Yet, if you want to know the details of his amazing recovery, you won’t find them in any major U.S. news outlet. Why not? Oliver’s story highlights the abject failure of socialized medicine and the spectacular success of the best health care system on the planet. In other words, it belies an ongoing propaganda campaign conducted by the media. 

Oliver’s story, which was even ignored by the Boston Globe, must be gleaned from sporadic reports in the British press, a few American news sites like the Daily Wire, social media, and the BCH website: Oliver was born in the UK, on the last day of January 2017, with a condition called cardiac fibroma — a large benign tumor of the heart. The term “benign” is misleading, however, indicating only that the tumor was non-cancerous. It was by no means benign in its effect on Oliver’s health. The condition rendered his heartbeat dangerously erratic, often causing his pulse to race at near lethal speeds. 

It soon became evident that, for Oliver to have any chance of reaching his first birthday, the tumor had to be removed. At this point Oliver’s parents were horrified to learn that the UK’s socialized medical system, the National Health Service (NHS), doesn’t employ a single surgeon with the expertise to perform that procedure. All they offered Oliver was a place on a purgatorial heart transplant list, but Tim and Lydia Cameron didn’t accept that. They began researching their son’s condition hoping to find some ray of hope. They found it at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Ah, but remember poor little Alfie Evans?  He also had promises of healthcare far from the shores of Her Majesty's scepter'd isle, but the bureaucrats at the National Health Service refused to let him leave, even posting police to prevent his getting foreign care.  So what hope did little Oliver have?

It turns out, the NHS bureaucrats flinched from the bad press they had been receiving:

Caution was indeed a wise policy. The NHS predictably refused the couple’s plea for Oliver to be sent to Boston where competent surgeons could perform the life-saving surgery. Lydia and Tim then asked if the NHS would agree to bring the American surgeons to the UK to perform the procedure. Inevitably, the NHS refused that request also. In desperation, the couple set up a crowd-funding page on GoFundMe in the hope that the NHS would allow Oliver to go to the U.S. if they paid for it themselves. By the middle of August, the Camerons had raised nearly £150,000 of their £200,000 goal.

Meanwhile, the major media all but ignored Oliver’s dilemma. The BBC, for example, ran a whopping 85-word story. Ironically, the media inadvertently aided the couple with its concurrent coverage of the controversial Charlie Gard case. Just as Oliver’s parents began raising money, public pressure on the NHS was steadily intensifying pursuant to its refusal to allow Charlie to go to the U.S., where a hospital had offered to admit him for experimental treatment. Shortly after Charlie died, the NHS suddenly reversed its position. Oliver could go to Boston.

Charlie Gard was another baby that was killed by the NHS, in a dry run for Alfie Evans.  But while it's very unlikely that the bureaucrats had a conscience or a sense of shame, they did have a bureaucrat's finely-tuned sense of self preservation.  And so they let Oliver go to Boston, where American surgeons saved his life.

In other words, the NHS allowed Oliver to get competent treatment in the U.S. primarily as a way of avoiding further bad publicity. And the American “news” media, having inadvertently given socialized medicine a black eye by devoting so much coverage to the Charlie Gard atrocity, remained silent as the tomb regarding the NHS decision to send Oliver Cameron to Boston Children’s Hospital for surgery. And, when that 8-hour procedure proved successful, it was all but blacked out by the media.

The media blackout is passing strange, is it not?  We are drowning in glowing stories about the newly proposed "Medicare for Everyone" plan that would nationalize every doctor in the land.  Why, oh why is the media not covering stories like Oliver's?

There are three obvious lessons here: First, socialism doesn’t work in medicine or any other human enterprise. It removes the incentive to keep up with the times and it invariably puts soulless bureaucrats in charge of your life. These people couldn’t care less if you live or die. Second, capitalism does work in medicine and every other human enterprise. It provides the incentive to remain state-of-the-art, and it puts you in charge of your own life. Third, anyone who says socialism will render U.S. health care more efficient or equitable than our quasi-capitalistic system is an idiot or a liar.

My one gentle criticism of the author is that last sentence: idiot or liar.  Perhaps we can embrace the healing power of "and"?

Anyone who is enamored of socialized medicine might productively read through my posts tagged "Killed by socialized medicine" which go back nine years.  There are lots of examples that the media generally doesn't report.