Benjamin Franklin on Natural Selection

"By the way, When do you intend to live? i.e. to enjoy Life. When will you retire to your Villa, give your self Repose, delight in Viewing the Operations of Nature in the vegetable Creation, assist her in her Works, get your ingenious Friends at times about you, make them happy with your Conversation, and enjoy theirs; or, if alone, amuse yourself with your Books and elegant Collections? To be hurried about perpetually from one sick Chamber to another, is not Living. Do you please yourself with the Fancy that you are doing Good? You are mistaken. Half the Lives you save are not worth saving, as being useless; and almost the other Half ought not to be sav’d, as being mischievous. Does your Conscience never hint to you the Impiety of being in constant Warfare against the Plans of Providence? Disease was intended as the Punishment of Intemperance, Sloth, and other Vices; and the Example of that Punishment was intended to promote and strengthen the opposite Virtues. But here you step in officiously with your Art, disappoint those wise Intentions of Nature, and make Men safe in their Excesses. Whereby you seem to me to be of just the same Service to Society as some favourite first Minister, who out of the great Benevolence of his Heart should procure Pardons for all Criminals that apply’d to him. Only think of the Consequences!"


-- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Dr. John Fothergill, March 14, 1764

Like oysters observing the sun

“Methinks we have hugely mistaken the matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water was thinnest air. Methinks my body is the lees of my better being. In fact, take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.”


-- Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter VII, The Chapel

Sadly, college isn't for everyone

The Atlantic

"The College Board has suggested a “college readiness benchmark” that works out to roughly 500 on each portion of the SAT as a score below which students are not likely to achieve at least a B-minus average at “a four-year college”—presumably an average one. (By comparison, at Ohio State University, a considerably better-than-average school ranked 52nd among U.S. universities by U.S. News & World Report, freshmen entering in 2014 averaged 605 on the reading section of the SAT and 668 on the math section.)

How many high-school students are capable of meeting the College Board benchmark? This is not easy to answer, because in most states, large numbers of students never take a college-entrance exam (in California, for example, at most 43 percent of high-school students sit for the SAT or the ACT). To get a general sense, though, we can look to Delaware, Idaho, Maine, and the District of Columbia, which provide the SAT for free and have SAT participation rates above 90 percent, according to The Washington Post. In these states in 2015, the percentage of students averaging at least 500 on the reading section ranged from 33 percent (in D.C.) to 40 percent (in Maine), with similar distributions scoring 500 or more on the math and writing sections. Considering that these data don’t include dropouts, it seems safe to say that no more than one in three American high-school students is capable of hitting the College Board’s benchmark. Quibble with the details all you want, but there’s no escaping the conclusion that most Americans aren’t smart enough to do something we are told is an essential step toward succeeding in our new, brain-centric economy—namely, get through four years of college with moderately good grades."

Lion -- Michael Hettich

Behind that door
in a white room we keep
a man who thinks
he is a lion.
You can see he's kept safe.
He thinks he's a lion!


Once he escaped
and ran through the city.
Disappeared.
Changed his name.
Actually this isn't him,
this is a lion.


And this is a picture
of the African plains.
We'll slip it beneath
his door now; he'll look at it
smiling, draw
an animal on it
and himself running
to catch it, slip
the picture back under
the door.


thus we study
the workings of his mind.


Today he's drawn
a bowl, that's a bowl
of soup, being carried
by a stick figure, a woman.


That's him smiling.
Notice the hair
is wild, that he wears
no shirt.
Each day the picture
is different, but he always
smiles. Tonight his dinner


is soup, of course,
and a woman, but what
do you think of his smile,
his naked chest, skinny
after months in the white room
but still wild --


What do you think
he looks like, who do you
think he is, who do you
think he thinks
he is, we are? These are some
of the questions we ask ourselves.
A wild man! A lion!

Lion -- Michael Hettich

Behind that door
in a white room we keep
a man who thinks
he is a lion.
You can see he's kept safe.
He thinks he's a lion!


Once he escaped
and ran through the city.
Disappeared.
Changed his name.
Actually this isn't him,
this is a lion.


And this is a picture
of the African plains.
We'll slip it beneath
his door now; he'll look at it
smiling, draw
an animal on it
and himself running
to catch it, slip
the picture back under
the door.


thus we study
the workings of his mind.


Today he's drawn
a bowl, that's a bowl
of soup, being carried
by a stick figure, a woman.


That's him smiling.
Notice the hair
is wild, that he wears
no shirt.
Each day the picture
is different, but he always
smiles. Tonight his dinner


is soup, of course,
and a woman, but what
do you think of his smile,
his naked chest, skinny
after months in the white room
but still wild --


What do you think
he looks like, who do you
think he is, who do you
think he thinks
he is, we are? These are some
of the questions we ask ourselves.
A wild man! A lion!

Lion -- Michael Hettich

Behind that door
in a white room we keep
a man who thinks
he is a lion.
You can see he's kept safe.
He thinks he's a lion!


Once he escaped
and ran through the city.
Disappeared.
Changed his name.
Actually this isn't him,
this is a lion.


And this is a picture
of the African plains.
We'll slip it beneath
his door now; he'll look at it
smiling, draw
an animal on it
and himself running
to catch it, slip
the picture back under
the door.


thus we study
the workings of his mind.


Today he's drawn
a bowl, that's a bowl
of soup, being carried
by a stick figure, a woman.


That's him smiling.
Notice the hair
is wild, that he wears
no shirt.
Each day the picture
is different, but he always
smiles. Tonight his dinner


is soup, of course,
and a woman, but what
do you think of his smile,
his naked chest, skinny
after months in the white room
but still wild --


What do you think
he looks like, who do you
think he is, who do you
think he thinks
he is, we are? These are some
of the questions we ask ourselves.
A wild man! A lion!

I Would Be in Love -- Frank Sinatra

If I lived the past over, saw today from yesterday
I would be in love anyway
If I knew that you'd leave me, if I knew you wouldn't stay
I would be in love anyway

Sometimes I think, think about before
Sometime I think, if I knew then what I know now
I don't believe I'd ever change somehow
 Though you'll never be with me, and there are no words to say
I'll still be in love anyway

If I knew then what I know now, I don't believe I'd ever change
Somehow if I knew then what I know now
I don't believe I'd ever change somehow

Songwriters
GAUDIO, ROBERT/HOLMES, JAKE

Learning through aphorisms

"For a word that literally means definition, the aphorism is a rather indefinite genre. It bears a family resemblance to the fragment, the proverb, the maxim, the hypomnema, the epigram, the mantra, the parable, and the prose poem. Coined sometime between the fifth and third centuries BC as the title for one of the books of the Corpus Hippocraticum, the Aphorismi were originally a compendium of the latest medical knowledge. The penultimate aphorism, “In chronic disease an excessive flux from the bowels is bad,” is more representative of the collection’s contents than the first—“Life is short, art is long”—for which it is best known.

But in those six words lies a clue to the particular space aphorisms were supposed to define. Thanks to a semantic slippage between the Greek word techne and its English translation (via the Latin ars), the saying is often taken to mean that the works of human beings outlast their days. But in its original context, Hippocrates or his editors probably intended something more pragmatic: the craft of medicine takes a long time to learn, and physicians have a short time in which to learn it."

The Worst Mass Shooting in U.S. History

Lest we forget. On March 16, 1968, in a single morning, U.S. soldiers murdered between 347 and 504 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians, including women, children, and infants. Only one U.S. soldier was ever convicted for the crimes. He ended up serving only three and a half years under house arrest.

Wikipedia

"Harry Stanley, a machine gunner from the Charlie Company, said during the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division's (CID) inquiry that the killings started without warning. He first observed a member of the 1st Platoon strike a Vietnamese man with a bayonet. Then, the same trooper pushed another villager into a well and threw a grenade in the well. Further, he saw fifteen or twenty people, mainly women and children, kneeling around a temple with burning incense. They were praying and crying. They were all killed by shots in the head. ...

A large group of approximately 70–80 villagers was rounded up by the 1st Platoon in Xom Lang, and then led to an irrigation ditch to the east of the settlement. All detainees were pushed into the ditch and then killed after repeated orders issued by Lieutenant Calley, who was also shooting. Paul Meadlo, a Private First Class (PFC), testified that he expended several M16 magazines. He recollected that women were allegedly saying "No VC" and were trying to shield their children. ...

William Thomas Allison, a professor of Military History at Georgia Southern University, wrote, "By midmorning, members of Charlie Company had killed hundreds of civilians and raped or assaulted countless women and young girls. They encountered no enemy fire and found no weapons in My Lai itself".^"

Speaking of Horrific Mass Shootings...

Spotted Elk lies dead after the Massacre at Wounded Knee,  December 29, 1890. While attempting to disarm a starving band of Indians, soldiers of the U.S. government shot dead at least 150 people in a matter of minutes, including at least 44 women and 18 children.

"There was a woman with an infant in her arms who was killed as she almost touched the flag of truce ... A mother was shot down with her infant; the child not knowing that its mother was dead was still nursing ... The women as they were fleeing with their babies were killed together, shot right through ... and after most all of them had been killed a cry was made that all those who were not killed or wounded should come forth and they would be safe. Little boys ... came out of their places of refuge, and as soon as they came in sight a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there."


American Horse (1840–1908); chief, Oglala Lakota




"I know the men did not aim deliberately and they were greatly excited. I don't believe they saw their sights. They fired rapidly but it seemed to me only a few seconds till there was not a living thing before us; warriors, squaws, children, ponies, and dogs ... went down before that unaimed fire."


Edward S. Godfrey; captain; commanded Co. D of the 7th Cavalry




"General Nelson A. Miles who visited the scene of carnage, following a three-day blizzard, estimated that around 300 snow shrouded forms were strewn over the countryside. He also discovered to his horror that helpless children and women with babies in their arms had been chased as far as two miles from the original scene of encounter and cut down without mercy by the troopers. ... Judging by the slaughter on the battlefield it was suggested that the soldiers simply went berserk. For who could explain such a merciless disregard for life?"


Hugh McGinnis; First Battalion, Co. K, 7th Cavalry




"I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream ... the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."


Black Elk (1863–1950); medicine man, Oglala Lakota

Fifteen Deadliest Mass Shootings Worldwide

The New York Times featured this table; I added the links and the fourth column on Motive. It's sort of a stupid list, because it is focused on shooting attacks only -- the Bataclan Paris attack (130 murdered) doesn't make the list because it also involved suicide bomb vests. But it is nicely international and does include a few I had never heard of.

Fifteen Deadliest Mass Shootings Worldwide

Incident	Victims Killed	Country	Motive
2011 Norway attacks	69	Norway	Neofascist extremism
1982 South Korea shootings	58	South Korea	Anger/resentment
2016 Orlando nightclub shooting	49	United States	Islamic extremism
2015 Tunisia attack	38	Tunisia	Islamic extremism
1996 Port Arthur massacre	35	Australia	Anger/resentment
1999 Mikenskaya shooting	34	Russia	Chechen-Russian Hatred
2007 Virginia Tech shooting	32	United States	Anger/resentment
1986 Bogotá shooting	29	Colombia	Anger/resentment
1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre	29	West Bank	Jewish extremism
2012 Sandy Hook shooting	27	United States	Anger/resentment
1994 Kampala wedding massacre	26	Uganda	Child soldiers with automatic weapons
1994 Tian Mingjian incident	23	China	Anger/resentment
1991 Luby's shooting	23	United States	Anger/resentment
2000 Jarafa mosque massacre	22	Sudan	Islamic extremism
1984 San Ysidro McDonald's massacre	21	United States	Anger/resentment

Source: Adam Lankford, University of Alabama

There is no such thing as Grit

Yeah, it doesn't take a genius to tell people what they want to hear. But first you have to repackage the hard-to-spell Big Five personality trait Conscientiousness into something memorable ("Grit"). Then you can lie and tell people that Grit can be increased somehow, by parents, educators, yourself. And of course, you can lie and tell them that IQ doesn't matter.


TRUTH: IQ is hugely more predictive of life success than "Grit." "Grit" is just Conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is a substantially biologically-based and stable trait. There are no interventions known to increase Conscientiousness (with perhaps the exception of stimulant medication in ADHD children).

Jordan Peterson, Ph.D., Quora

"By the way, there is also no such thing as "grit," despite what Angela Duckworth says. Grit is conscientiousness, plain and simple (although probably more the industrious side than the orderly side). All Duckworth and her compatriots did was fail to notice that they had re-invented a very well documented phenomena, that already had a name (and, when they did notice it, failed to produce the appropriate mea culpas. Not one of psychology's brighter moments). A physicists who "re-discovered" iron and named it melignite or something equivalent would be immediately revealed as ignorant or manipulative (or, more likely, as ignorant and manipulative), and then taunted out of the field. Duckworth? She received a MacArthur Genius grant for her trouble."

North Labrador -- Hart Crane

A land of leaning ice
Hugged by plaster-grey arches of sky,
Flings itself silently
Into eternity.

'Has no one come here to win you,
Or left you with the faintest blush
Upon your glittering breasts?
Have you no memories, O Darkly Bright?'

Cold-hushed, there is only the shifting moments
That journey toward no Spring -
No birth, no death, no time nor sun
In answer.                         

Haydn Trumpet Concerto (3rd Movement): Wynton Marsalis, trumpet

"I dress up a certain way because I respect the music."

"Franz Joseph Haydn was sixty-four years old and semi-retired when he wrote his Trumpet Concerto. He had spent nearly three decades, beginning in 1761, laboring assiduously in the service of the exorbitantly wealthy Esterházy court and, in the process, becoming the most revered composer in all of Europe. For almost all of Haydn’s tenure, the reigning monarch was Prince Nicholas Esterházy, known as Nicholas the Magnificent thanks to the lavish festivities he underwrote for occasions of special political or social significance. He could well afford it; by some reckonings he was richer than even the Emperor of Austria. Prince Nicholas died on September 28, 1790, and he was succeeded by his son, Anton. The new prince did not much care for music, and a mere two days after his father’s death he fired the entire court orchestra and opera company, retaining only a small wind-band for ceremonial occasions. Haydn’s services would prove largely unnecessary to his court. The new prince therefore granted Europe’s most admired composer a pension of a thousand florins a year; and although he kept him on staff as his music director, he made it clear that no particular duties—or even attendance—would be required. For the first time in decades, Haydn was free to explore."


Source: SF Symphony

Death row inmates spend decades in solitary confinement

Would it be just to compel citizens of death penalty states to take part in executions? After all, the condemned was sentenced to death in the name of the people of that state.  It would be just like jury duty, except much, much worse. 

Mother Jones

"Last June, in Davis v. Ayala, Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion that he acknowledged had nothing to do with the issues the court had been asked to resolve, launching a broadside against solitary confinement. He emphasized that Hector Ayala had spent more than 25 years on death row, largely in solitary confinement, and highlighted the dangers of such confinement to the human psyche, which have been well documented since the 18^th century. Citing an 1890 Supreme Court decision, Kennedy wrote, "[T]his Court recognized that, even for prisoners sentenced to death, solitary confinement bears 'a further terror and peculiar infamy.'" He quoted that decision's description of inmates subjected to solitary before execution: "A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short [solitary] confinement, into semi-fatuous condition...and others became violently insane; others, still, committed suicide."

Citing Amnesty International and international law—a habit that's irked fellow conservatives over the years—Kennedy noted that human rights groups consider America's modern treatment of death row inmates, with their long stints in solitary before execution, a form of torture. Kennedy lamented that sentencing judges have no influence on these conditions, writing, "So in many cases, it is as if a judge had no choice but to say: 'In imposing this capital sentence, the court is well aware that during the many years you will serve in prison before your execution, the penal system has a solitary confinement regime that will bring you to the edge of madness, perhaps to madness itself.' Even if the law were to condone or permit this added punishment, so stark an outcome ought not to be the result of society's simple unawareness or indifference.""

The Goldwater Rule, and why Dan McAdams' article on Trump was so lame

There's a big difference between your not liking someone and his having a mental disorder (e.g., Narcissistic Personality Disorder). Personality disorders tend to cause serious disruption in people's lives; in contrast, Donald Trump seems to have enjoyed several decades of extremely smooth sailing. Like it or not, he's probably psychologically better adjusted than you are. And yeah, same goes for Hillary.

538

"Both psychiatrists and psychologists operate under ethical rules that prevent them from offering professional diagnostic opinions about the mental health of public figures they have not personally examined. The American Psychiatric Association’s version of this is known as the Goldwater Rule — named for another polarizing Republican presidential candidate.

The rule has its roots in the September/October 1964 issue of a magazine called Fact, which was entirely devoted to parsing the results of a survey the editors had sent to more than 12,000 psychiatrists. The survey only had one question: “Do you believe Barry Goldwater is psychologically fit to serve as president of the United States?”

Most of the psychiatrists — 9,939 of them, to be exact — didn’t respond. Of those who did, 571 said they didn’t know enough about Goldwater to answer, and another 657 declared him fit as a fiddle. But 1,189 psychiatrists said “no,” and many of them added colorful commentary that the magazine reprinted under a headline (“FACT: 1,189 Psychiatrists Say Goldwater is Psychologically Unfit to Be President!”) that conveniently left out the fact that they didn’t represent a majority opinion. The Republican presidential candidate was called “paranoid” and “a dangerous lunatic.” One respondent suggested that Goldwater had “a stronger identification to his mother than to his father” — fighting words in 1964 America, apparently.

In the aftermath, Goldwater sued Fact (and won), Fact went defunct, and the American Psychiatric Association tried to make sure that none of this would ever happen again. The result was Section 7.3 of the APA’s Principles of Medical Ethics:

On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.

Or, as Ezra Griffith, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Yale and a member of the APA’s Ethics Committee, put it: “If you’re going to talk to the press and spread stuff on your opinions, it’s important to at least say very clearly, ‘I have not examined this individual and therefore much of what I’m saying is sort of mystical black magic.’ ”

The Goldwater Rule is the reason psychiatrists who comment in celebrity gossip magazines always first clarify that they have not treated Joaquin Phoenix, Lisa Marie Presley, Britney Spears, etc. It’s also why The Atlantic’s June cover story — a long personality analysis of Donald Trump written by Northwestern University psychologist Dan McAdams — was very careful to stay far away from the realm of medical diagnosis.

The idea of psychoanalyzing public figures — especially public figures you don’t like — can be appealing, McAdams told me. We feel like we have lots of information about them and who they are. In fact, he has received angry letters from readers upset that he didn’t diagnose Trump with a personality disorder. But mental health is still health, he said, and labeling Trump from afar would be no different than diagnosing President Obama with leukemia, sight unseen.

What’s more, McAdams said, the basis of diagnosing a mental health disorder is that the person feels disordered. Human behavior and personality exist on a spectrum and the thing that makes the difference between, say, somebody who is a bit scatterbrained and somebody with ADHD is that the latter is debilitated by the symptoms they experience and has trouble functioning in society. And it’s hard to make a case for that being true of somebody successfully running for president of the United States. “Whether you like him or not, he seems to function,” McAdams said."

Taking away gun rights from the mentally ill poor

So, what (probably unconstitutional) policy are we suggesting here? Prohibition of gun ownership for anyone receiving Social Security disability for mental illness? I'm okay with that. Probably would prevent some deaths by suicide. But putting folks with mental illness in the same class as felons -- that's a bit dicey.

The Atlantic

"Though big, scary mass shootings get the most attention when it comes to gun violence, 60 percent of deaths caused by firearms are suicides. And another new study in this same issue of Health Affairs emphasizes that suicide, not homicide, is the major public health problem for mentally ill people with guns. In it, Swanson and his colleagues looked at 81,704 people getting public health services for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depressive disorder in two large Florida counties. They tracked these people’s death records, as well as whether they were barred from owning guns.

In that group, the rate of people who died by suicide was four times higher than that of the general population. The violent crime rate was just under two times higher. But consider that this is a group of people receiving government care, who “might have other risk factors for violence, including poverty and social disadvantage, unemployment, residential instability, substance use problems, history of violent victimization, exposure to neighborhood violence, or involvement with the criminal justice system,” the study reads. So you can’t reasonably attribute the higher violent crime rate in this group to mental illness alone.

...

“It’s a big public health opportunity to limit access to guns,” Swanson says.  And it could make a big difference for suicide attempt survival rates. Among people who’ve survived a suicide attempt, more than 90 percent do not go on to kill themselves later. But guns are the most common method of suicide, and people who try to kill themselves with a gun usually succeed—85 percent of the time. “They don’t get that second chance,” Swanson says.

Overall, the study concluded, “[the results] would seem to suggest that suicide, not homicide, should be the crux of gun violence prevention efforts focused on people with serious mental illnesses in public systems of care.”

Homeless, schizophrenic, Harvard Law '79

"Schizophrenia creeps. Some people, especially those as accomplished as Postell, can hide their symptoms for months. As the victim withdraws from social and work life, plunging into isolation, relatives, friends and co-workers may not notice anything amiss. Then there’s a snap. Psychologists refer to this moment as a “psychotic break” or a “first break.” It’s when a victim’s slackening grip on reality finally ruptures, cleaving their lives into two clear categories: before and after."

WaPo, 7/13/2015

"The judge settled his gaze on the homeless man accused of sleeping beside an office building in downtown Washington.

It was a Saturday afternoon in early April at D.C. Superior Court, and Alfred Postell, a diagnosed schizophrenic, stood before Judge Thomas Motley.

Postell’s hair was medium length and graying. His belly spilled over his pants. A tangled beard hung from his jowls.

“You have the right to remain silent,” a deputy clerk told Postell, according to a transcript of the arraignment. “Anything you say, other than to your attorney, can be used against you.”

“I’m a lawyer,” Postell replied.

Motley ignored the seemingly bizarre assertion, mulling over whether Postell, charged with unlawful entry, posed a flight risk.

“I have to return,” Postell protested, offering a convoluted explanation: “I passed the Bar at Catholic University, was admitted to Constitution Hall. I swore the Oath of Office as an attorney at Constitution Hall in 1979; graduated from Harvard Law School in 1979.”

That got Motley’s attention. He’d also graduated from Harvard Law School in 1979.

“Mr. Postell, so did I,” Motley said. “I remember you.”

This homeless man — who totes his belongings in white plastic bags, haunts the intersection of 17th and I streets NW and sometimes sleeps at a church — studied law alongside U.S. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and former Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold. All of them graduated from Harvard in 1979."

Operation Overlord: Eisenhower's Message to the Allied Expeditionary Force

Emergency rations: 4 pieces of chewing gum; 2 bouillon cubes; 2 Nescafe instant coffees, 2 sugar cubes, and creamers; 4 Hershey bars; 1 pack of Charms candy; 1 package pipe tobacco.

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41.

The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching together to victory.

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory.

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

There he was -- Alan Dugan

There he was
on horseback, and
the saber's drawn,
lunar acuity
cut out a slice
of sunlight in mid-air.
He whirled it once
around his head, a halo, and
discharged it at a foe.
Charge forever, hero! Rear,
horse! The saber points
toward death, by means
of which he charged
into a statue in the square.
To you the glory, brother,
and to us the girls.

She's Gone -- Hall and Oates (1976)

I don't know what the musical build up at the end is called but it's remarkable. Reminds me of Bob Fosse's All That Jazz (same era).

Everybody's high on consolation
Everybody's trying to tell me what's right for me
My daddy tried to bore me with a sermon
But it's plain to see that they can't comfort me

Sorry Charlie for the imposition
I think I've got it, got the strength to carry on
I need a drink and a quick decision
Now it's up to me, ooh what will be

She's gone, oh I, oh I'd
Better learn how to face it
She's gone, oh I, oh I'd
Pay the devil to replace her
She's gone, what went wrong

Get up in the morning look in the mirror
I'm worn as her tooth brush hanging in the stand
My face ain't looking any younger
Now I can see love's taken her toll on me

She's gone, oh I, oh I'd
Better learn how to face it
She's gone, oh I, oh I'd
Pay the devil to replace her
She's gone, what went wrong

Think I'll spend eternity in the city
Let the carbon and monoxide choke my thoughts away
And pretty bodies help dissolve the memories
But they can never be what she was to me

She's gone, oh I, oh I'd
Better learn how to face it
She's gone, oh I, oh I'd
Pay the devil to replace her
She's gone, what went wrong

She's gone, oh I, oh I'd
Better learn how to face it
She's gone (she's gone)
I can't believe that she's gone, oh I
I'd pay the devil to replace her
She's gone oh I, oh I'd
Better learn how to face it
She's gone (she's gone)
I can't believe that she's gone, oh I
I'd pay the devil to replace her
She's gone (she's gone)
She's gone (she's gone)
She's gone (she's gone)
She's gone (she's gone)
She's gone

Songwriters
DARYL HALL, JOHN OATES

Need a therapy appointment? Therapists call back less than 30% of the time, and even less if you're black or working class.

The Atlantic

"[A] new study suggests there might be another problem at play when low-income and black people attempt to schedule psychotherapy appointments: They never make it past the first voicemail. The study, published in the June issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, suggests psychotherapists are more likely to offer appointments to middle-class white people than to middle-class African-Americans or to working-class people of any race.

For the study, Heather Kugelmass, a doctoral student in sociology at Princeton University, selected 320 therapists from the directory of Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield’s HMO plan in New York City. She then had voice actors call them and leave voicemail messages saying they were depressed and anxious. They asked for a weekday evening appointment. She distinguished between different income groups by altering the vocabulary and grammar in the scripts, and she used studies on African-American vernacular and Black-accented English to craft the African-American callers’ scripts. The lower-income white callers spoke in a heavy, New York City accent. All of the callers mentioned they had the insurance that the therapists purportedly accepted.

Then Kugelmass counted the callbacks.

She found 28 percent of white, middle-class callers were called back and offered any appointment, compared to just 17 percent of African-American, middle-class callers. Only eight percent of the working-class callers of either race were offered an appointment. When therapists offered appointments in the ideal time slot—weekday evenings—the wealthier, white callers prevailed once again.

Kugelmass also found subtle differences by gender, with the odds largely stacked against black men. If her experiment were to play out in the real world, an identifiably black, working-class man would have to call 80 therapists before he was offered a weekday evening appointment. A middle-class white woman would only have to call five.                                              

Psychotherapists tend to favor patients falling under the acronym “YAVIS”—young, attractive, verbal, intelligent, and successful, according to other studies. They like “psychologically minded” clients who remind them of themselves. One study found that psychiatrists view black patients as “less articulate, competent, [and] introspective,” Kugelmass wrote. Just 5 percent of psychologists are African-American."

 

Triplet and Higher-Order Births in U.S. Down 41%





What the New York Times article doesn't mention is that yes, fertility clinics are implanting fewer embryos, but they are also still using selective abortion to whittle down the number of kids being born. A woman might have four embryos implanted (a not unusual number), in the hope that one becomes viable. If three become viable, she might elect to have one or two selectively aborted. Voila, fewer triplets being born.



NYT

"Older mothers are more likely to have a multiple birth, and the increase before 1998 was largely attributed to rising average maternal age, according to the lead author, Joyce A. Martin, a statistician with the N.C.H.S.

“Age of mothers has continued to increase,” she said, “so you would expect the rate of triplets to increase. So the decline cannot be attributed to any changes in maternal age.”

“We think the decline is likely largely related to changes in fertility therapies, particularly assisted reproductive technology,” she added.

Fertility centers now are urged, for example, not to implant multiple embryos in women receiving treatment."

Blake Leibel, 35 year old Hollywood rich kid and graphic novelist, arrested for murdering his wife

This ought to be interesting. The guy's father is really rich so he's going to get the best defense money can buy. The victim immigrated from Ukraine just a couple of years ago.

WaPo

"Blake Leibel was fascinated by evil.

His graphic novel centered on the search for the bad seed lurking in the brains of serial killers. He wrote a screenplay about a madman on a murder spree. His work, he wrote online, “grappled with the questions surrounding what provokes a person to commit evil acts.”

Now Leibel stands accused of taking that fascination too far by reenacting his bloody imagination in real life.

On Tuesday, the 35-year-old appeared in a Los Angeles courtroom to face charges of torturing, mutilating and killing his girlfriend.

Leibel was arrested in West Hollywood on Thursday when authorities discovered his girlfriend’s body inside their barricaded apartment, according to the Associated Press.

Iana Kasian, 30, had just given birth to their first child three weeks earlier.

In a detail seemingly pulled from Leibel’s own graphic novel, prosecutors said her body had been “drained” of its blood.

Leibel has pleaded not guilty. If convicted of first-degree murder, he could face the death penalty, the AP reported.

Such a sentence would be a bizarre and ironic twist for the graphic novelist, whose best-known work begins with the execution of a serial killer on death row.

It would also mark a sudden and precipitous fall for Leibel, the son of a wealthy Toronto developer and former Olympian."